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Google rolls out improved Chrome app for Android, iOS

Mike Flacy
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Detailed within a post on the official Google Chrome Blog earlier today, Google has released two major updates to Chrome on the most popular mobile platforms. While both the Android and iOS versions of Chrome received a variety of bug fixes and security enhancements, the new Android version of Chrome includes a sizable speed boost and the iOS version has updates to search, social sharing and browsing Web history. Both versions of Chrome can be downloaded for free on Google Play or the App Store.

chrome for iosSpecifically, Chrome on Android has been shifted to the most recent version of the V8 Javascript engine. According to Google, this has improved performance within Google’s Octane bench-marking tool by 25 percent. For the end user, pages will load quicker within the browser and the experience will generally feel more responsive.

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In addition, Google added support for more HTML5 features within the Android version of Chrome. As more sites upgrade to HTML5 on mobile, the Chrome browser will be able to handle those sites easily.

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Launching approximately eight months ago for iPhone and iPad users, Google has attempted to garner a portion of users that utilize Apple’s Safari browser on a daily basis. Finally added to the mobile version, Google’s omnibox in the updated iOS version of Chrome allows the user to utilize the URL entry area for all search queries. This alteration also allows more content to appear on the screen when browsing a page.

Regarding social improvements, users can share any page over email as well as social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Safari offers similar sharing options, but does not include Google+ in the mix. Finally, Google has added a “press and hold” function to the back button. When that button is held down, Chrome brings up previous browsing history. This is an ideal feature when users want to quickly revisit a recently loaded page.

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Mike Flacy
Mike Flacy
Contributing Editor
By day, I'm the content and social media manager for High-Def Digest, Steve's Digicams and The CheckOut on Ben's Bargains…
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