Google Chrome

Having been requested for a long time, Google finally have brought their highly successful Google Chrome web browser to iOS devices. Chrome was first released for Windows at the end of 2008. Since then, it has been the browser chosen for many computers all over the world. As of May 2012, Chrome is used by 33% of browser users, more than any other browser. As Android is owned by Google, Android users got to have Chrome on their devices first, but now Google have decided not to single the huge mount of iOS users out.



Available On
iOS devices running iOS 4.3 or later
Download Google Chrome for iOS from iTunes Here


The app itself looks very smart and attractive. Having compared Safari to Google Chrome on the New iPad, I believe that Chrome is faster and has some nice extra features to excel from Safari. One of these features is that it has a microphone symbol so that you can make a Google search from inside the browser when on any webpage. This is very handy and easy to use, though it can make mistakes if it has a hard time recognising your accent like it does with my Yorkshire accent. Also if you link your Google account with your Chrome on you PC with your iOS device then you can send pages to view and can be viewed on your iOS device even when you are offline. This is a nice feature to have, though I'm not sure that I will use it that often. Others though may use this feature all the time so I'm not going to label this as a negative feature. The whole experience of the browser is very smooth and enjoyable to use. The look on the iPad's retina display looks amazing and I'm sure it will on the retina iPods and iPhones.


Reasons to Download
This app is available for free to all iOS users, which will always encourage users to try. If you are a Chrome user on your desktop then you can link your account and share bookmarks with multiple devices. You can view saved pages when you are offline. The browser from a layout perspective looks great with not too many button, meaning that it is easy to navigate.


Reasons Not to Download

All though this has some nice extra features to use, at the end of the day, you are still going to do the exactly the same thing with the app as Safari. Therefore you may feel that it is just a waste of space on your device since you can get the same information on safari. Another reason not to download is that the browser doesn't support flash like safari on iOS but unlike the desktop version of Chrome. This is quite disappointing as it is a much needed feature for iOS devices.


Rating
I am going to give this app four stars out of five due to it's nice and neat look and experience but lacks flash that is wanted by many iOS users.