Following in Apple’s footsteps once again, Samsung added support for content and ad blockers to its pre-installed browser over the weekend. As long as you use the Samsung Internet browser on your Galaxy phone, you will now be able to download extensions from the Google Play store that hide advertisements and speed up loading times.
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Considering the update to Samsung’s browser is less than 24 hours old, there aren’t too many ad blockers to be found at the moment, but Samsung did partner up with Adblock Fast to bring the popular open source iOS, Chrome and Opera ad blocker to Android at launch.
According to a blog post by the software creators, Adblock Fast is already used by over 200,000 users across all platforms, and benchmarks show that web pages on Android load 51% faster with the software installed. But if Adblock Fast isn’t your cup of tea, you can also download Crystal. The popular iOS ad blocker made its way to Android on Sunday as well.
Although ad blockers made a splash when they first hit iOS last year, the buzz died down within weeks. Save for early adopters, no one really seemed interested in blocking ads on their phones. It’s a nice option to have, but considering the fact that ad blocking will only be available on the Samsung Internet browser rather than Chrome on Android for the time being, it’s hard to imagine it picking up steam.
