New Chrome update for Android fixes vulnerabilities, brings sandboxing

Google has rolled out the first post-beta update for its Chrome browser for the Android platform. The update addresses various security issues and brings improvements for Chrome’s sandboxing technology, besides fixing other moderate bugs. The update is for devices running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and later. Chrome is available only for devices running Android 4.0 Ice cream Sandwich and later, and if you're looking to get this update, hit up Google's Play Store.

Chrome’s sandbox technology helps ensure malicious mobile websites are contained and do not impact the entire browser. A post on the Google Chrome blog by software engineer Jay Civelli states that this is made possible by “the innovative multi-process architecture in Chrome for Android, in conjunction with Android’s User ID (UID) isolation technology”. He adds that Jelly Bean devices would automatically use this more in-depth sandboxing technology.

New Chrome update fixes quite a few bugs

The Google Play page for Chrome states that the update integrates location preferences into the system-level Google apps location settings. YouTube video controls now work in full screen mode and videos will continue to play after the screen has been locked or unlocked. Google has also added fixes to enable third-party IMEs to work better with Chrome.

The majority of the update fixes vulnerabilities in the browser. A total of seven vulnerabilities have been fixed. The vulnerabilities were revealed by two researchers - Artem Chaykin and Takeshi Terada – who received a total of $3500 in reward.

Google launched Chrome for Android this February. The first public Beta of the browser brought quite a few of the features found on the desktop version, like the ‘omnibox’ address bar, tabbed browsing, incognito mode, and the ability to sync all your desktop bookmarks and open tabs between devices on different platforms, allowing you to seamlessly switch between your desktop and smartphone.

The idea behind Chrome is speed and simplicity, as Sundar Pichai, Google's Senior Vice President of Chrome and Apps, said in a blog post. “We reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen phone as they do on a larger screen tablet," Pichai said. "You can flip or swipe between an unlimited number of tabs using intuitive gestures, as if you're holding a deck of cards in the palm of your hands, each one a new window to the web."

The effect is a lot better on a tablet, of course, giving you a very desktop-like experience. You can switch between pages by simply swiping the screen left or right and closing a tab is done in a similar fashion, along with which you get a nice little animation.

The browser is still a little buggy even though it’s came out of Beta on June 27 as a stable release, but Google says it’s working on that.