A Quick Look at Microsoft Edge Preview on iPhone
- Paul Thurrott
- Oct 05, 2017
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19
As promised, Microsoft delivered its first preview version of Microsoft Edge for iOS today. Here’s a quick look at the experience on my iPhone 7 Plus.
Short version: There’s nothing dramatic to report. Microsoft Edge looks and works like other mobile browsers on iPhone.
The initial experience is basic enough: When I received the confirmation email from Microsoft, I launched TestFlight, which I know from other Microsoft betas on iOS, and accepted the Microsoft Edge install.
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Launching Edge for the first time, I was automatically signed into my Microsoft account, though it appears I could choose to use another account instead.
The Edge UI on iOS is simple enough: There’s an address bar at the top, but as with the Windows 10 version, you can navigate from a search bar on the default new tab screen too.
That address bar offers Refresh and Add to Favorites.
There’s even a Reading view for articles, but inking capabilities, as we see on the PC. No surprise there, but I could see it coming to iPad in the future.
It works in portrait or landscape mode.
At the bottom of the display is a toolbar with Back, Forward, Continue on PC, Tabs, and a More menu with several other choices, among them Settings. You can also access the Hub interfaces for Favorites and Reading list, but not Books, History, or Downloads.
Settings is pretty sparse, but you can change the default search provider to Google if you want.
Basically, it’s early still. There is a lot of functionality that Microsoft should or still could still add before the first public release. And right now, the only PCs that show up in Continue to PC are those on certain Insider builds.
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Stooks
<p>Does it support content blockers like Safari does on iOS?</p>