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Technology > Chrome for Android Boasts Great Features, But Limited Users
February 10, 2012

This week Android users received great news – that Google Chrome has now officially been made available on their Android mobile devices. Unfortunately, whatever merrymaking this news instigated was short-lived as it was revealed that only a small portion of Android users could experience this new development- 1% of them, to be exact.

Web development and technology news site Mashable reports that Chrome for Android Beta is only available for Android 4.0 devices, the users of which comprise only an estimated 2 million of the approximately 200 million total active Android users. According to Mashable the app has only been made available for download in the Android Market for users in Australia, the U.S. and U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. Though the limited distribution has been discouraging, feedback and reviews posted online by the lucky few who have tried the app have been very positive, giving the new app four to five stars.

‘Fantastic’ Features

In Google’s official blog, the new Chrome for Android Beta boasts of several new features and a focus on speed and simplicity. Among those new features are private browsing, integration with other Google services YouTube and Google Maps, seamless syncing with browser history, bookmarks, apps and other data from other computers, open tabs view, expanded maps and of course, smart and incredibly fast searching. According to TechCrunch writer Jason Kincaid it is “fantastic”, “loaded with potential” and a definite improvement to Android’s built-in browser, even though both share much of the same codebase and V8 JavaScript engine.

In his article Kincaid reports that Google’s reason for only making the app available for users of Android 4.0 or more commonly known as Ice Cream Sandwich is because “Chrome needs to take advantage of the hardware acceleration features that were introduced in the latest build of the OS.”

Consolation Prize

Given all the positive feedback it’s already received and the many desirable features it’s been flaunting, there’s no doubt the new app is making many non-Ice Cream Sandwich users green with envy. There is one update to Android that all users can be grateful for though, and that’s the new layer of Android security which Google revealed early this month. According to Google’s official blog, the security update playfully and fittingly called “Bouncer”, “provides automated scanning of Android Market for potentially malicious software without disrupting the user experience of Android Market or requiring developers to go through an application approval process.” The update has been quite successful, causing a 40% decrease in the number of potentially-malicious downloads from Android Market. The blog adds that aside from this malware-preventing update, Google continues to protect Android users through core security features “Sandboxing”, which is the placing of virtual walls between apps and other software on a device, a permission system and malware removal that allows for easy malware detection and remote removal. So even if not everyone can tote Google Chrome on their Android devices just yet, at least they can all breathe easy knowing malicious malware won’t be in their midst.

 
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