For some reason or another, Apple doesn't let app makers make their own web browsers, far less make it the default one on iOS. So, what's all that thing about Google releasing Chrome for iOS?
Well, specifically, Apple doesn't let app load and render web pages directly other than by re-using the built-in Webkit rendering engine of Safari. In effect, Chrome is a re-skinning of the Safari engine, with a different UI and lots of unique functionality.
Actually, the UI of Chrome is quite amazing to use compared to Safari. Also, it transparently syncs with their desktop browser, has their own speech recognition search (not from Nuance, of course), preloads pages and auto-logins you to their various web services.
Another alternate browser I also use is Atomic Web. It has tons to "power-user features", including faking other browsers, downloading files to Dropbox, and much, much more.
The only browser that actually renders without Safari is Opera Mini. The loophole is that Opera Mini never actually loads and renders directly the web pages: It's all done on Opera's servers, and a highly-compressed render of the page is sent to you. If you browse without images, you can easily cut down 98% of your bandwidth usage, a great thing on international roaming plans.
Published on June 28, 2012 at 21:05 EDT
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