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Comment by spaar | Hacker News Reader

The iOS version of Chrome doesn't use Chrome's rendering and JavaScript engines though, per the App Store rules it has to use WebKit [0]. So, any other browser app on iOS would have the same problems as mobile Safari.

[0] http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/06/28/chrome-ios (linked by the article btw)

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That's amazing. Thanks for reminding me how much contempt they have for choice.

Not quite my area of expertise, but I believe that browsers on Android also tend to use the core Android browser components though they can dress them up slightly differently.

They can, but they don't have to. Mozilla ships a Gecko engine in Firefox for Android.

Browsers on Android are not required to use Android's built in WebViews. And several alternative browser engines are offered by the platform[0].

Android has no specific restrictions in place. Although it is the path of least resistance to use the built in WebView, since you now don't need to deploy your own.

[0] Including: Blink (Amazon Silk, Chrome, Opera), WebKit (BlackBerry, Dolphin, et al), Gecko (Firefox, Minimo), NetFront (Blazer). At the moment WebKit derivatives seem to be most popular, but several browsers re-build it from the source rather than just using Android's WebKit components.

Thanks, as I said, NMAOE and I was mostly reflecting observations based on some dated Android builds.

Some browsers do, but Firefox Mobile uses it's own core.

That makes it possible to use extensions like ublock, for much better browsing experience than any browser without ad blocker can provide.

> ...I believe that browsers on Android also tend to use...

The word 'also' doesn't belong here. Browsers on iOS don't tend to use core iOS components (WebView) : they are forced to. Your statement really isn't a counter point.

They might tend to, but Firefox for example is the real thing on Android.

Ah, I wasn't aware of that. Thanks.

Yea, I just really like that I can access all of my open tabs with it. It also context switches better with iOS outlook if you click on links you can quickly go back to outlook.

Sounds like United States v. Microsoft Corp.[1] all over again.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

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