Chrome for Android to get big updates in the next year
Google's senior vice president of Chrome and Apps, Sundar Pichai, sat down and talked about Chrome in all of its iterations with CNet and more specifically, he talked about the new Chrome Beta for Android and the improvements that we can expect to see in future updates. Chrome Beta hit the Android Market just a couple weeks ago, but the improvements it brought in speed and HTML5 performance were instantly noticeable.
Google has always been a company that is pretty open about gathering input from users and using that data to inform the updates that get pushed to Google products, and Chrome for Android is no different. According to Pichai, Google has heard the cries from power users and will be bringing at least a couple of requested features to Chrome for Android soon. Pichai directly said that the browser will be getting the option to view the desktop version of pages, as well as full-screen browsing where the Omnibar automatically hides, much like the ICS stock browser. He also mentioned Flash, but made it clear that the issue is more that Adobe will not be updating Flash to support Chrome for Android, rather than it being an issue on Google's end.
Pichai also said that Google will be taking "leaps and bounds" over the next year in updating and improving Chrome for Android, although he didn't mention exactly what those updates would include aside from the two outlined above. He also said that the browser has seen pretty impressive adoption (between 100,000 and 500,000 downloads) given its compatibility with only Android 4.0+ devices, but hinted that there may be features that we haven't really noticed because the browser hasn't had much use on tablets.
We've been loving Chrome for Android and we're excited to see what updates Google pushes out. We're certainly hoping for extension support, and double-tap to zoom could use some work. What do you guys want to see?
source: CNet
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