Owners of the latest iPhones get updated Chrome browser

Oct 8, 2014 08:59 GMT  ·  By

Google has released version 38.0.2125.59 of its Chrome web browser for iDevices, adding better support for Apple’s latest handsets, new Google Drive functionality, as well as the usual onslaught of fixes and stability improvements.

Chrome 38.0.2125.59 is available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad and requires iOS 7.0 as the minimum firmware to run. The browser is free to download and use indefinitely.

iPhone 6 love

Yesterday evening, Google announced the 38th release of its Chrome web browser not only for mobiles but also for the desktop. The Mac / Windows / Linux version included a number of new apps/extension APIs and “lots of under the hood changes for stability and performance,” according to Matthew Yuan, a member of the Google Chrome development team.

On iOS, things are a bit different. Chrome 38.0.2125.59 focuses on adding better support for Apple’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, the newest additions to the company’s smartphone line.

Both models have higher resolutions than the previous generation of iPhones, and Google needed to adjust Chrome’s GUI to match the pixel count and offer a crisp visual experience.

iPhone 6 users have complained that many of their favorite apps display blurry on their new screens. Google wanted to get this out of the way quickly.

Download and open files in Google Drive

In addition to offering better support for iPhone 6 resolutions, Chrome 38 for iOS adds the new ability to download and open files in Google Drive. The browser prompts the user to open a downloaded file in various apps installed on the phone. With this update, the Drive app also appears in that list.

Stability improvements and bug fixes

The usual bag of fixes is included with this update, though unfortunately we’ve already experienced some crashing with the current version of Chrome on an iPhone 5 unit.

Upon downloading files larger than 200MB, Chrome freezes and sometimes crashes altogether. For an update that promised to offer downloads on the go, the experience is less than satisfactory.

Our guess is this happens because Chrome doesn’t have access to the file system to lay down the downloaded file, which prompts the browser to store that download in the phone’s RAM memory, which is far smaller than the phone’s physical storage capacity.

Whatever is happening in there, Google will need to address it pronto. Chrome 38 sounded like a very promising update until we tried the downloads function. We hope iPhone 6 owners have better luck using this feature.