Hey,

my phone plan (free plan) allows surfing the web for free but with very slow speeds between 32 kbps and 64 kbps. Safari would not load pages and just display website is not reachable due to a timeout. So, I came up with the idea to build a frugal text browser with some nice features that works with my phone plan.

I can disable loading images, media or web fonts. I can set an ad blocking DNS. I can even use LLMs with my slow connection. In settings you can set your own LLM base url and api key. In an emergency situation this is amazing!

I hope other people enjoy it as much as I do. It’s completely free.

The app is called Narrow32, search in App Store :)

Btw: The community guided me to !imadethis@lemmy.zip

  • TacoEvent@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    T-Mobile (a U.S. phone carrier) plans include free global roaming at 256kbps down which is bearable for texting apps but unusable in almost anything else. This is perfect!

  • altkey (he\him)@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Offtop, but I recall Opera browser having a Turbo mode that proxied your requests through their servers where they compressed and optimized stuff for your low traffic and low resources usage. I now see something akin to that implemented in PiHole as a network-wide adblocker. All different solutions on different layers, incl. your app, but what one can hope one day is that essential (if not most) services could have themselves had a low-traffic no-bullshit mode availiable upon request from the client, a solid petition material for the likes of EU.

    • q1p_@lemmy.zipOP
      0·
      2 days ago

      Maybe a setting in all browsers would be great, for example “Request lite version of website” that can be toggled on and then a request gets sent to the server which serves the lite version of that website.

  • Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    0·
    2 days ago

    that looks awesome, but tbh i think making it ios 26.1 or higher is a missed opportunity. many people will slow connections will also be using old, out-of-date phones, so making it require the very latest version seems silly to me

    • q1p_@lemmy.zipOP
      0·
      2 days ago

      I will change this tonight. Which version do you suggest setting the iOS version requirements to?

      • Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        0·
        2 days ago

        imo, the lowest possible, the better

        im not an ios dev, and you are, so you’ll certainly know more about this than me, but from searching the minimum xcode 16 can target is ios 15. imo that’s fine enough, and from what i’ve seen it’s not even possible to upload something made for an older version anymore

        thank you for replying btw! and good luck with your projects!

    • q1p_@lemmy.zipOP
      0·
      2 days ago

      The default settings work best but if you want, you can also block web fonts. That could cause some websites to break, so use with caution.

      Edit: Oh, I forgot to say, you can always share your experience here. Would love to hear. :)

  • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 days ago

    it’s about time we got free internet at low speeds. imagine if it would be trivial to connect anything to the internet with slow speeds.

    although it’ll probably end up in a dystopia

    • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      0·
      2 days ago

      There’s also Firsty free which is ad-supported. But now it’s limited to 300MB per day. And also the data speed and time per ad depend on the location. I think it’s 15 - 60 minutes per ad and 256kbps to 1Mbps. In Slovakia I get 30 minutes at 256kbps.

      But it’s not fully reliable. For example, now I wasn’t able to watch an ad after running out of time. In the past Uber and Google Maps were usable even without watching ads. Maybe that’s still supposed to be the case, but DNS just crapped out. With the Google part there was a bit of a bug, everything Google worked. At full speed. Even 4K60fps YouTube videos, and back then they didn’t even have the 300MB limit.
      Since they don’t seem to be huge, and the ads certainly don’t provide that much money I ended up reporting that and it has been fixed since.

      Also, right now hotspot randomly works even without changing the TTL.

      Right… and there’s one more problem. Device support, based on Play Store. I could only install it using aurora store when spoofing my phone as Google Pixel.

      Speed test:

      • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 days ago

        ad supported sounds like a nightmare. why can’t we have a free tier with low speeds or even 100mb limit. like Amazon’s old whispernet for the original kindles (insane how shitty are modern kindles compared to the old ones with keyboards).

    • q1p_@lemmy.zipOP
      0·
      2 days ago

      Yes! It is time, and I hope more and more cell phone providers offer a free plan.

      • NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.comEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        Just a heads up that the App Store shows your full name so now it can be linked to this Lemmy account. Unless you didn’t care or used a fake name. Just wanted you to be aware in case you didn’t know about this.

  • Atropos@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 days ago

    Neat, I want to see more apps designed with efficiency in mind.

    Any interest in an android version? I’d love to take it for a spin.