If speed is your holy grail, Chrome is your mobile browser. With Android 4.1 , Google finally replaced the stock Android browser with its very own Chrome for Android (free). Chrome first hit Google Play as a beta app, but now the full release brings an even slicker user interface, faster performance both in real life and in benchmarks, and mobile-only features like voice search and scrolling navigation.

If you're a desktop Chrome user, you're probably already familiar with Chrome's other flagship features, such as Incognito browsing, autofilling, and the unified search/address bar (called omnibox). That's all in mobile Chrome too.

What Chrome lacks is video-loving Flash. The stock Android browser supported the plug-in, but I guess Google is putting the final nail in Flash's coffin—unsurprising, given Adobe's abandonment of Android support last December. If you're hell-bent on using Flash, then check out (free) or (free, 4.5 stars and an Editors' Choice), both excellent browsers that let you customize gestures, support Flash, and download numerous plug-ins. But for fast, simple browsing, Chrome can't be beat.

How Chrome Makes Searching Faster

To make the most of Chrome's intelligent, fast searching, sign into your Google account when you browse. Chrome syncs pretty much every keystroke you enter into Chrome on a desktop or another mobile device, as long as you've signed into your Chrome account. For instance, even if you quit Chrome on one device you can open Chrome on another and see your last synced tabs, bookmarks, and browsing history. However, this is a one-way street only—desktop to mobile.

Syncing also makes autocomplete with Chrome for Android more effective too, since the search engine improves with use. For instance when I typed "F-A" in the omnibox, it immediately suggested my friend's Facebook page that I had been checking out a minute earlier in my desktop browser. Spookay.

You can actively improve your autocomplete suggestions. For every suggestion, you can tap an up arrow next to it, to bump up the suggestion. The next time autocomplete is activated, that bumped suggestion will pop up first.

Chrome now accepts voice input, too. Simply tap the mic symbol next to the omnibox and speak clearly, slowly, and preferably in a quiet place. I was surprised at how much I found myself using this feature, and forgave Chrome for always managing to confuse "six" with "sex," because it shaves off so much time. In other browsers, such as Dolphin HD's Sonor, the voice input is part of the keyboard, which means a two-tap process to use it, versus Chrome's one-tap process.

Power Tabbing

A lot of browsers do the tab thing, but Chrome does it best. A single tap on the tab icon next to your omnibox opens up a new tab—in Chrome beta, it took two taps. You can open a seemingly infinite number of tabs and swipe the left or right edges to move from one to the next, though I found this gesture inconsistent. A more effective way is to simply scroll through the tab names themselves, which beats navigating on a desktop. If you've lost track of what tabs you've opened, simply open a new one to display a thumbnail view of opened tabs.

Supposedly, you can also tilt left and right to switch between tabs too (using your device's accelerometer) but this never worked for me.

Tabs in Chrome have a functional benefit as well, though that hasn't reached the mobile app yet. In desktop Chrome each tab has a separate rendering processes, which from an end user perspective means that if one tab crashes, or is breached, it doesn't affect any of your other open tabs.

Benchmarks: Sunspider, V8

We put all mobile browsers through two Javascript rendering tests, Sunspider version 0.9.1 and V8. I ran each test three times and averaged the results. Chrome came out on top for both, in a pool that includes the stock Android browser, Dolphin Browser Mini 7, Firefox 10, Dolphin Browser HD 7, Opera Mobile 11, and UC Browser.

In Sunspider, where a lower score is better, Chrome scored 1,765ms. Next was Firefox (2,865 ms), Opera (3,251), and the previous stock browser a distant (4,172).

In Google's V8 Benchmark Suite test (where higher is better), version 6, Chrome trounced the competition. It scored 1575, more than twice as fast as the next fastest, the stock browser (627).

A Browser for the Privileged

Sadly Chrome is only available to devices with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and above (that's still a paltry six percent of you Android users, according to Google), and I am reluctant to give top marks to an app that so few of you can use. Still, there's no denying that, if you are running Ice Cream Sandwich, Chrome is the Editors' Choice browser. For the vast majority of Android users, however, Dolphin still reigns supreme.

More Android App Reviews:

