Lots of regions around the world don’t have the steady, affordable and fastLTE/3G privileges we enjoy in 1st world countries. So an idea like the Cosmos browser for Android would be really appreciated. Cosmos browser for Android is an app that doesn’t need data. The app provides web access using SMS so that you can view web pages without using Wi-Fi or even a lowly2G network. To use the Cosmos browser for Android, you simply enter the URL, which is then sent to back-end servers through a text message. In-turn, the servers strip out CSS and JavaScript from the content at that URL, compress the information and sends it back via SMS for the app to decompress and render the HTML.
As seen on the project’s Github:
After a person inputs a url, our app texts our Twilio number which forwards the URL as a POST request to our Node.JS backend. The backend takes the url, gets the HTML source of the website, minifies it, gets rid of the css, Javascript, and images, GZIP compresses it, encodes it in Base64, and sends the data as a series of SMS’s. The phone receives this stream at a rate of 3 messages per second, orders them, decompresses them, and displays the content.
Even though the Cosmos browser for Android can’t replicate an actual online browsers, at least users can get basic internet information the need. Emerging markets Telecommunication companies in these regions should get behind the project just like the experimental Smozzy app (still functional) launched by T-Mobile in 2011. Developers can get a look at the projects code now atGitHub.
