CIO — I'm always partial to products that come out of small companies and independent developers. After all, Dell and Facebook started in dorm rooms, and giant companies like, Microsoft (MSFT), HP (HPQ) and Apple (AAPL) launched as shoe-string operations It is, you might say, the Silicon Valley way, even if some of those outfits were born outside of California. So it's good to see a worthy competitor to Apple's Safari mobile browser come out of the software shop of Ang Quang Do, an independent developer based in London.

[Are you new to the iPhone? Learn 10 essential tips and tricks. | Check out CIO.com's 15 must-have iPhone apps.]

Ang (that's his family name) is the author of Cyberspace, a nifty little browser that runs on an iPhone or iPad. I've used the $2.99 app on my smartphone for the last few days and found that I barely miss Safari, and there are some notable improvements that make it worth consideration.

Like a lot of apps on Apple's App Store, the earliest iterations of Cyberspace wasn't altogether stable, according to some user comments that I've seen. But the newest version I've been using hasn't crashed once, is plenty fast, and all the features appear to work as advertised, though I have noticed an occasional stumble during searches.

Browsing and Searching Features

Cyberspace is a bit of hybrid, combining some features of Chrome and mobile Safari, along with innovations of its own. The default search engine is DuckDuckGo, a silly name for a decent tool. Google (GOOG) is in the mix as sort of a helper; when you enter a search term, Google provides suggestions.

Like Google's Chrome browser, Cyberspace combines the url bar and the search bar into one, saving a bit of real estate. It's called the "duckbar." A related feature, let's you switch virtual key boards with the tap of finger, bringing up keys you would need in either search or url mode. You can use the duckbar like a calculator — Chrome has that function as well — or even enter a simple question, like "how many calories in two eggs?" and get the answer (111) without clicking on a search result.

DuckDuckGo adds a "learn more" feature to search; if you highlight text on the page, you'll get an option to, well, learn more, and are given a page of related links.

Ang says one reason he uses DuckDuckGo instead of Google is because the former does not track any personal information. That's probably true, but I wouldn't use DuckDuck on a laptop or iPad, it isn't nearly as rich with options as Google. But since many of those options don't work very well on a tiny screen, DuckDuck is just fine for an iPhone.

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