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Introducing Chrome for Android

googleblog.blogspot.com

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Re: Introducing Chrome for Android

#121

Post by jonursenbach »

schraeds wrote: post #118
cryptoz wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is common Google strategy. They are trying to build the future and pre-ICS devices are not the future. So they get shafted. Google may make unhappy customers this way, but they can move a lot faster than companies like Microsoft, who support everything back two decades or so sometimes.

Apple seems to be able to innovate iOS while providing robust and timely updates for older devices.

The way Android is fragmented changes all of that. If iOS were fragmented the same way Android was, Apple would be doing the same thing.

Re: Introducing Chrome for Android

#122

Post by cryptoz »

schraeds wrote: post #118
cryptoz wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is common Google strategy. They are trying to build the future and pre-ICS devices are not the future. So they get shafted. Google may make unhappy customers this way, but they can move a lot faster than companies like Microsoft, who support everything back two decades or so sometimes.

Apple seems to be able to innovate iOS while providing robust and timely updates for older devices.

I would not call iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G "robust": it was more of a disaster than anything. There are obviously strengths to all sides here, and I don't mean to champion that Google's is best or the only way. But I think it's clear what they're doing, and I'd bet they've weighed all possible options and found this to be the most economically sensible one.

Re: Introducing Chrome for Android

#123

Post by j_baker »

schraeds wrote: post #118
cryptoz wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is common Google strategy. They are trying to build the future and pre-ICS devices are not the future. So they get shafted. Google may make unhappy customers this way, but they can move a lot faster than companies like Microsoft, who support everything back two decades or so sometimes.

Apple seems to be able to innovate iOS while providing robust and timely updates for older devices.

That's certainly true for some definition of "robust" and "timely". I'm assuming yours doesn't include security and bug fixes.

Re: Introducing Chrome for Android

#124

Post by huggyface »

trotsky wrote: post #16

Decoupling the browser from the OS is one of the best things that could happen for android security going forward. While it won't help people who can't get upgrades to ICS, at least it will solve the future problems of people who get stuck on 4.x while their OS browser slowly becomes more and more exploitable. I have one phone that is still on 2.2 - it is trivially easy to own the phone with a little bit of javascrip…

Decoupling the browser from the OS is one of the best things that could happen for android security going forward.

Decoupling everything but the most rudimentary services is the best way forward for both security and user satisfaction. Despite the laser focus on the underlying operating system version by so many, tens of millions of Android users, across makes, models, and carriers, are seeing endless updates of mapping and navigation, the search functionality, the mail applications, the Android market, and so on. Decoupling the browser adds it into the bin of "no longer need to care about the underlying OS much", and goes a long way to make the fragmentation issue a non-issue.

Re: Introducing Chrome for Android

#125

Post by lwhi »

It's a shame that this has only been released for Android 4.0. My hope is that use of Chrome for Android becomes commonplace. SVG support has been lacking in the Android stock browser in all releases up to Gingerbread - Android 4.0 (and 3.0) already have SVG support, earlier release could really benefit.

Re: Introducing Chrome for Android

#126

Post by gcb »

A browser with that many permissions? what good is sandboxing and everything if the browser can access 100% of my device, including microphone?

i'm thankful this is not available for my ancient, 11mo old, nexus one.

Re: Introducing Chrome for Android

#127

Post by borismus »

bvdbijl wrote: post #97
nickpresta wrote: post #41

Direct Market Link: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.android.chrome The download is a hefty 16MB. Features: * Chrome-to-mobile, Sync bookmarks, history, settings, Auto sign-in * Bandwidth management (preload webpages) * Privacy settings * Developer tools: Tilt Scrolling, USB Web Debugging (debug web pages from Chrome Desktop via USB??) * Incognito mode * About screen: http://i.imgur.com/Ahr6t.jpg The homepag…

Instructions on how to use web debugging via USB: http://code.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/debugging.html You can then access http://localhost:9222/ which shows a list of all pages currently open on your device, which link to a page on http://chrome-devtools-frontend.appspot.com/ for example http://chrome-devtools-frontend.appspot.com/static/16.0.912.... which in turn connects to a websocket on localhost like ws://l…

To get a feel for USB web debugging, check out this remote debugging video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4zpL4VBbuU

Re: Introducing Chrome for Android

#128

Post by apress »

benologist wrote: post #3

Douche move making it require Ice Cream Sandwich while they don't require telcos to ship any of us upgrades.

It's using 4.0 APIs, according to Matt Seigler's story and interview with Google SVP of Chrome Sundar Pichai:

"Back to the bad news: some of the more advanced features of Chrome for Android require APIs found only in Ice Cream Sandwich, so the team made the call to make it only available for Android 4.0 and beyond. Again, this means only 1% of current Android users out there can actually get and use the browser right now." - http://parislemon.com/post/17215781807/chrome-for-android-th...

Re: Introducing Chrome for Android

#129

Post by w1ntermute »

schraeds wrote: post #118
cryptoz wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is common Google strategy. They are trying to build the future and pre-ICS devices are not the future. So they get shafted. Google may make unhappy customers this way, but they can move a lot faster than companies like Microsoft, who support everything back two decades or so sometimes.

Apple seems to be able to innovate iOS while providing robust and timely updates for older devices.

Oh yeah? Let me know when I can get Siri on an iPhone 4 without resorting to some sketchy hacks.

Re: Introducing Chrome for Android

#130

Post by jentulman »

paulirish wrote: post #108
SlimHop wrote: post #70

Can anyone speak to whether or not Chrome for Android supports WebGL?

It doesn't support WebGL right now. Some more answers to questions like this at http://code.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/faq.html

Just thought I'd try it. Nothing I've tried on chromeexperiments.com has worked using a galaxy nexus.
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