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Google Releases Chrome For Android Beta
An anonymous reader writes "Today Google announced the availability of a beta version of its Chrome browser for Android. Unfortunately, it's limited to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) devices. Google is trying to keep Chrome fast and easy to use, and part of that involved redesigning tabs so they work more naturally with touchscreens. 'You can flip or swipe between an unlimited number of tabs using intuitive gestures, as if you're holding a deck of cards in the palm of your hands, each one a new window to the web.' They've also including synchronization functionality that allows you to move from desktop browsing to phone or tablet browsing and pick up right where you left off."
Didn't Android *always* have Chrome?
When Google first announced Android, they stated it's web browser was based on WebKit with the V8 JavaScript engine, just like Chrome on the Desktop.
Thirty four characters live here.
Android users who are able to run Chrome Beta (that is, who are running ICS) are literally the 1%, according to Google's platform pie charts:
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html
I prefer that they exploit the full power of their latest and greatest, but it's sad that only a mere 1% can access the latest and greatest :( (as of today, I'm sure this will change very quickly)
They're not looking at who can run it today, but who will be able to run it in the future.
On a side note, I think it's a good thing that the app is not part of the core OS, (like Gmail was removed from the core OS a few versions ago) and can as such be updated separately.
http://www.webkit.org/coding/bsd-license.html
Really nothing more to say...
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Now implement synergy, native cards for multitasking, unobtrusive notifications, and a gesture area with intuitive, consistent gestures throughout the OS and all applications.
More like a merge of the Palm WebOS UI with Chrome. If it is the same, It's actually pretty cool and not just pretentious BS advertising.
--WooooHoooo--
Just like Gmail, Google+ and a host of other Google services started out limited to a very small group... and then they expanded the beta to their entire user base later on.
I've put this on my Galaxy Tab 10.1, which I recently updated to a developer release of CyanogenMod9 (The forthcoming ICS based Cyanogen). It really is nice. I can load up the full desktop version of Google+, which only sorta-kinda worked under the standard ICS browsers, and sorta-kinda worked differently under Firefox mobile, and it works 100%, no compromises. And doesn't feel much slower than my desktop either. That's great! The only annoyance is that it does seem to identify itself as a mobile browser, and I haven't yet found an option to change the user agent. No problem for sites like Wikipedia or G+ that give you a link to escape their mobile versions, but could be annoying elsewhere, since so many mobile sites are terrible. Surprising overside, since the stock browser in ICS includes an option to "request desktop site".
Good for you? I don't think Google cares a whole hell of a lot.
If it's not an official ROM, don't expect support. Running EncounterICS Beta 3 on a Droid X here. And like other users of unofficial ICS ROMs, it doesn't work. For me, the problem is that all web pages are blank. Being that us bleeding edge custom ROM users are used to being bug testers, this is good for the beta and hopefully will be fixed soon.
I8-D
Firefox has been doing this for a while. It is one of the primary reasons I use it since there is great synchronization of bookmarks along with it being a great mobile browser. I'm surprised it has taken chrome this long to do it and I'm also surprised it is only good for the newest version of android. I'll stick with Firefox mobile for now until the chrome works in 2.2 or 2.3.
When the websites I routinely visit stop posting content in Flash, I won't want it on my mobile devices anymore.
Until then, I either put flash on my android phone, or email myself a link to check out the site when I'm near a desktop computer.
Put ICS on it. I have the original Galaxy S (US Cellular Mesmerize) that only had 2.3, but I found ICS on Rootzwiki and it works great.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Tax those 1%-ers. Make 'em send in 30% of the bits.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
If you want to try that, be aware that it doesn't support HTTP proxying. Kind of an epic fail on Google's behalf, given that they have just added system-wide proxy setting in ICS after several years of users complaining about the lack of this.
Well its one thing when the iPhone 4S has the same amount of memory as all the other iPhones.
All ICS devices have at least 1 gigabyte of ram or more - most older android phones only have 512 megs - it makes a big difference.
The Nexus S (which has ICS) and the Nexus S 4G (which soon will be getting it) only have 512Mb of memory and strangely enough...ICS runs great on it.
For a start, most (if not all) ICS phones guarantee some kind of spec pre-requisite, (512mb of ram, non-crappy cpu and gup, internal memory space) that I suppose will help delivering a good experience.
And second, and most importantly, every version of Android adds new features and ways to access them, who are you to say that chrome doesn't need them? If it turns out it doesn't, I'm quite sure an APK will turn out somewhere.
And you forget that google doesn't profit from android directly. There were no licencing fees, or even need by google to push ICS anywhere. Google gains nothing by limiting chrome to ICS... ... Unlike Apple that limited Siri to the iPhone 4S simply because they wanted to sell more phones. Siri's heavy lifting is not done on the phone and the old iPhone 4 was more than capable of playing the part. Actually, if you look at the iPhone 4S, 99% of the people buying it had no real need for it and I doubt that without Siri and all the marketing surrounding it Apple would have sold half the phones they did.
Conversely, the Galaxy S2 has 1GB of RAM when running 2.3.2, and I didn't notice it increase when I installed ICS.
ICS works great on the G2 with only 512MB - I'd say it is peppier than Gingerbread was. Now if only they either had a stable driver API or actually kept their drivers up-to-date or open-source...
When the websites I routinely visit stop posting content in Flash, I won't want it on my mobile devices anymore.
Which should be shortly since Chrome on Android will not support Flash either.
With no mobile platform supporting Flash it makes a ton more sense to simply drop Flash everywhere and focus on HTML5 support, even for desktop use.
As it is there is pretty much nothing I have missed Flash for on an iPad. And I've greatly enjoyed the far longer battery life I get as a result.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley