Google today released the new version of Chrome for iOS. With this update, it is bringing a number of features that were previously only available in the Android app to Apple’s iPhone and iPad.
Just like the Android app, for example, Chrome for iOS now supports Google’s Opera Turbo-like, data-compression proxy. By having your web browsing flow through Google’s servers, the company can compress your data (and especially images) to help you save up to 50 percent of bandwidth while you are browsing. Google will not, however, use the proxy for any connections to any sites that use secure connections (HTTPS).
Users will have to explicitly enable this feature, which makes sense, given that once enabled, all your browsing will touch Google servers – something not everybody will be comfortable with.
Also new in this release is built-in support for Google Translate, a feature both Android and desktop users have long been able to access. Whenever Chrome notices that you are surfing a site that isn’t in your native language, you can just tap the translation bar in Chrome and see the translated version.
With this update, Google is also starting to push out an updated new tab page for iOS that is meant to make “searching faster and easier.” As far as I can see, this means Google will show both a prominent Google Search bar on the new tab page, as well as a list of most-visited sites and recently closed tabs. Google says this part of the update will roll out slowly and will only be available on the iPhone at first.
Google had previously announced some of the iOS updates, though apparently it took the company a bit longer than planned to release the updated version.
Comment