18 June 2013

Swapnil Bhartiya's picture
Posted by Swapnil Bhartiya on February 07, 2012
Chrome on android

Google has now made available its popular browser for Android devices. “Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices," says Sundar Pichai, SVP, Chrome and Apps.

He further explains about the speed of Chrome, "With Chrome for Android, you can search, navigate and browse fast—Chrome fast. You can scroll through web pages as quickly as you can flick your finger. When searching, your top search results are loaded in the background as you type so pages appear instantly. And of course, both search and navigation can all be done quickly from the Chrome omnibox."

Google is known for its minimalistic and simple design and layout. Google Chrome for Android is no exception.

Sundar writes, "Chrome for Android is designed from the ground up for mobile devices. We reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen phone as they do on a larger screen tablet. 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."

Chrome for Android will also make life easier for users. You can sync bookmarks so you won't have to worry about a site you were reading if you have to suddenly go somewhere. Just bookmark it and continue reading on your mobile device.

The Chrome for Android will also be equipped with 'smart-suggestions' where it will show the frequently visited pages. If you are visiting Muktware quite a lot from your PC, when you are on your mobile device, it will autocomplete the moment you start typing muk...

If that's not enough here is more. If you left a tab opened on your PC you can access all those tabs from your mobile device (which means you won't even have to bookmark the pages you were reading as I mentioned above).

To access all these features all you need is to log into your same account from both devices (just they way Firefox's sync feature requires you to log in).

Availability
The app is available from the Android Market. But it seems to be available only in the US, which leaves the US armed forces and government employees posted outside deprived of the app.

Many useful services such as USAA, Nook, Google Books, Netflix are not available to US armed forces and employees.

Google needs to set up some system where US citizens, especially armed forces and govt employees, should be able to use such services on their Android devices.

Swapnil Bhartiya

A free software fund-a-mental-ist and Charles Bukowski fan, Swapnil also writes fiction and tries to find cracks in a proprietary company's 'paper armours'. He is a big movie buff and prefers listening to music at such high volumes that he's gone partially deaf when it comes to identifying anything positive about proprietary companies. You can follow him on Twitter, Google+ & Facebook. You can write to him on editor at muktware dot com