Surfy, a popular alternative Web browser to Internet Explorer on Windows Phone (News – Alert) 8 and 8.1, has been upgraded to version 5.0. With this update, comes several long-awaited features most users expect from an advanced browser as well as the typical mixture of security fixes and performance upgrades.

Voice search is one of the most highly anticipated and significant additions to the Surfy browser. When giving a simple voice command beginning with the phrase “Surfy, search for…” the browser automatically opens a page with results from a search engine of the user’s choice. This can be configured in the browser’s options screen.

Version 5.0 also adds support for file uploads to web forms, a regrettably overlooked feature until now. Users can upload a file of any type to a web form, no matter where it resides on the phone itself. A file can even be retrieved from another app and sent to Surfy before being uploaded, which takes advantage of the new app-to-app sharing capability on the Windows Phone 8.1. Surfy capitalizes on this further by allowing users to share links from Surfy to other apps and vice versa.

Surfy’s download functionality has been integrated more completely with the Windows Phone landscape. Users can now save files using Windows Phone 8.1’s file save picker as well as open them from any other app on the device.

Lastly Surfy has added downloadable HTML5 games, which are playable even when the phone is completely offline. “Jem Gem Party” and “2048” are a couple of the more notable examples. Support for HTML5 games is an excellent forward-looking decision, as a gaming platform that is so efficient on storage and processing power without requiring a data connection is essentially guaranteed a bright future.

Aside from the additional security and performance updates, language support for the browser has been expanded to 18 languages. Surfy can be downloaded as a limited-feature version from the Windows App Store; an in-app update to an optional premium version is available for those who want the complete experience.