by Google recently reheated the browser wars with the announcement that it would be switching rendering engines for Chrome. But despite iOS’s prohibition on non-WebKit-based browsers, the search giant isn’t letting its version of Chrome for Apple’s mobile platform languish.
The latest update to Google Chrome for iOS adds a few new features that make it an even more compelling offering: a full-screen mode for the iPhone and iPod touch, as well as printing capabilities that perhaps even surpass Safari’s own offering.
Google Chrome’s full-screen mode works in portrait and landscape, and eschews the overlay-style buttons Safari uses.
Of the new features, the full-screen mode in the iPhone and iPod touch isn’t necessarily something to write home about. Keep scrolling a page and the location bar will scroll up and off the screen—Safari on iOS has long had a similar behavior. But since, unlike Safari, all of Chrome’s controls are located on that top toolbar, you really do get a true “full-screen” experience in landscape and portrait. You can bring the toolbar back by scrolling back up or, as in most iOS apps, tapping the status bar at the top of the screen.
By comparison, iOS 6’s full-screen mode for Safari only works in landscape mode, and even there you get overlay buttons that may obscure part of the screen.
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