Google's Chrome- Now for Android 4.0

Bangalore: Google, in its long awaited attempt to unify browsers across tablets, PCs and Smartphones, just released the beta version of its Chrome browser for Android 4.0 (also known as Ice-Cream Sandwich) with enhanced features.

Till now, Android shipped with its own stock browser which was a toned-down, mobile-friendly version of the Chrome. The stock browser used a lot of Chrome’s codebase, and the most obvious difference between the two browsers, according to a report by TechCrunch, was the UI.

Tabs glide open and fade out to close-- and the browser has incorporated hardware acceleration so it feels faster. The browser also has a number of the latest HTML 5 features, which according to the ReadWriteWeb channel, is its best feature. Chrome for Android promises to be simple, and reliable as well, with a number of features such as the ability to load bookmarks from your desktop or laptop running Chrome, and zoom into a cluster of links so that you don’t end up clicking the wrong one. The beta version of the Chrome browser also has the Omnibox feature which allows the browser to predict which links you would visit next based on your preferences, and pre-load them.

However, Android users could be disappointed by the fact that the browser is not yet available for other versions of the OS, which (according to the platform version statistics on the Android Developers website) make up for around 99 percent of other android devices. TechCrunch reported that users of these versions of the OS could go for the Firefox browser for mobiles, which had a number of Chrome’s new features.

The ReadWriteWeb noted that Chrome for Ice-cream Sandwich carried a lot of potential for HTML 5 development and room for improvement with it.