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Puffin Cloud Phone: a virtual phone run in the cloud

By Hafiz Rahman

Editor, tools and utilities

Virtual phone running on cloud servers
Web apps hosted and rendered remotely
Browser split between on-device display and cloud rendering
Aimed at budget smartphones with modest hardware
Preinstalled on some phones, paid subscription on others

What a cloud virtual phone is for

Puffin Cloud Phone gives a handset a virtual phone that runs on remote servers, so the apps you use are not installed on the device itself. The developer presents it as a way to close the digital divide, meaning people with cheap phones can reach a fuller mobile experience.

Most copies come preinstalled by phone manufacturers. The developer says the Play Store version exists so those preinstalled copies can receive updates. Anyone without the preinstalled version needs a paid subscription to use the service.

How the browser is split between phone and cloud

The app divides a full browser into two halves. The phone handles display rasterization, which turns the rendered output into what appears on screen. HTML rendering happens on the cloud servers.

The developer puts the device side at about 5% of the code and the server side at the remaining 95%, with a large feature set on the server. That is why the client is kept small.

Running web apps on a virtual phone

Apps on a Puffin Cloud Phone run as web apps hosted in the cloud, not as installs on the handset. Whatever the virtual phone offers is delivered to the screen as the server renders it.

Because the apps live in the cloud, the phone does not need to store or process them locally.

Server-side performance on budget phones

The developer says web app performance is determined mainly by the cloud servers rather than the client device. On that basis, it says the service can deliver a premium mobile experience on a budget smartphone.

The handset's job is limited to drawing the display, so its own processor and memory carry less of the load than they would for apps installed locally.