One of the things I change straight off the bat when I get my new Android phones is the browser, usually changing it to DolphinHD(my personal choice at the moment) or Firefox for Android. Now it seems that I may not have to do that anymore, because one of the things that Larry Page may have been hinting at yesterday when he said ‘You won`t believe what we have managed to do in this release’ is a version of Chrome for Android.
A couple of weeks ago Google posted a build target revision for Chrome for Android on the Chromium source website. According to the ConceivablyTech.com website they are now being told that there is a build ready to be announced with Ice Cream Sandwich next Wednesday at the All Things D, Samsung/Google event. The Chrome for Android browser will be based on the Chrome Webkit code base and will hopefully include things like bookmark sync as well. For Android users the Chrome desktop browser offers the functionality of Chrome to Phone plugin which allows URL`s to be sent to your phone once you install the Chrome to Phone app from the Android market. Chrome users can also utilise the reverse option of sending links from your phone to the desktop browser by installing the Android to Cloud project app(I recommend supporting them by purchasing the Donate app as well).
There are apparently 200 million Chrome users now with a 24.6% share of the browser market and it continues to gain market share, possibly overtaking Firefox by the end of this year. It is a pretty fast browser and I personally love the simple interface and Google appear to be updating the features constantly adding more features. They recently included HTTP Pipelining(basically aggregates multiple HTTP requests into a single stream which makes for faster browsing) in there as well which will hopefully make it into the Android build as well. So all we can do is sit back and wait for Wednesday at 1:00pm AEDT for the announcement.
