Safari was iPhone’s MVP for a long time, but now it could be replaced by Chrome, after Apple opened up Safari’s hidden speed improvements to other browsers in iOS 8. But is Chrome the best choice?
The Contestants:
iOS offers a number of options but unfortunately most of them – including speed-concerned Opera, gesture-oriented Dolphin and privacy-focused Brave – don’t try their best to be your driver and instead they only cover a certain niche.
Safari
Safari has been our default browser for many years now, and it did its job as smooth as possible. The browser is deeply rooted into iOS and this implies the fact that you can search a specific thing in Spotlight and then open it using Safari. By default, most applications are able to open any links using Safari.
Chrome
Although when Chrome first landed on iOS is was quite slow, it could still manage to work properly with Google’s products and this convinced people to use it. Now both work at equal speed. Besides the features you’d expect any browser to have, on iOS, Chrome has a few aspects that are specific to Google: Google Now support, a built-in QR scanner, a translator and so on. Chrome’s tendency is also to hide a vast part of its interface, placing everything up top and foregoing Safari’s prevalent navigation bar from the bottom. Even if this might look good from an aesthetic point of view, the choice is up to the user’s preferences.
Let’s dig deeper into the browsers’ features and advantages:
- Chrome’s fluid voice search works flawlessly, unlike Safari which is not voice search specific.
- All of Google’s apps communicate great with Chrome, but if you’re not a heavy Google user, Safari remains your best choice.
- Both Safari and Chrome sync with their desktops apps.
- Safari has a great reading list, but Chrome’s is rumored to be on the way and who knows what it’ll bring.
- Safari blocks trackers and ads.
The verdict:
Choose Chrome if you swim in the deep waters of Google, but prefer Safari for everything else.
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