Okay, hands up anyone who didn’t expect this to happen, eventually. No-one? Good. Yes, it’s the news I’ve been expecting for months; Google’s Chrome browser has finally hit Android…
Well… I say it’s hit Android, but you need a phone running Ice Cream Sandwich (so, basically, just the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, for now) to use it. And it’s still very much a beta, so there’s a few bugs left to work out. But bearing that in mind, it’s still a mobile version of the browser that a fair few PC users seem to have fallen in love with. So, why is it so exciting?
I’ll tell ya now, it’s not because of its amazing Flash support, because it doesn’t have Flash support. Granted, Flash is slowly going the way of the dodo, and also granted, Adobe have said they’ll no longer support Flash, but I hated its exclusion on the iPhone, so I have to hate its exclusion here. When the whole net switches over to html5, it’ll not be a problem, but until then, it’s an issue I can’t not mention.
So, if we look past that, what’s so cool about Chrome for Android? Well, the key point is that it syncs up with the version of Chrome you’ve got running on your desktop, letting you open up all the same tabs, and so on. That’s pretty cool, but it does mean being logged into your Google account at all times, and you’re pretty much humped if you don’t use Chrome (which I don’t, ‘cos I vastly prefer Firefox).
Also, as I said, it’s only available for phones running Ice Cream Sandwich, which basically means that if you don’t have a Galaxy Nexus, you’re humped. Again. You won’t be, in future, if your phone is getting an official software update (say, for example, if you have the HTC Sensation XE), but if you have an older then sorry, but you’re still out of luck.
So, we’ll see how it pans out, I guess…
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