HPR4384: Browser and dedicated apps on the mobile phone

Hacker Public Radio

Recently I had a discussion on Mastodon about mobile phone applications. The other person stated "the web belongs to web browsers". I agreed to it as a general good approach. Some dedicated apps cannot be substituted with the browser, but some can. I do not have so many apps myself, but anyway that statement got me to review a couple of my apps how they works in the Firefox browser. And actually, I could delete three apps and all functions I needed from them can be managed from Firefox. Beside traditional bookmarks, those pages can be pinned to the Firefox start page or placed like a webapp on the mobile screen, so they look like an ordinary app. Using the Firefox browser makes it easier to control the privacy. In addition to what is built into Firefox, I currently also have the two extensions, Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin in my Firefox browser. Beside privacy and in general to be somewhat more in control, this approach also reduces the number of apps to keep updated and reduce storage need. Sometimes apps are necessary of otherwise beneficial. But I think the traditional browser should not be forgotten also on the smart mobile phone.