The default web browser on Android phones and tablets uses the same WebKit rendering engine as the Google Chrome web browser for desktop and laptop computers. But it’s not Chrome.

But today Google has launched the first version of Chrome for Android. It looks like the desktop version of Chrome and features the same omnibox that lets you enter a URL or a search query — with suggestions popping up as you type.

When you sign in with your Google account you’ll automatically be able to access your bookmarks, search history, and other data from the desktop version of Chrome.

There’s also an option to view browser tabs that are open on other devices. If you’re signed into Chrome on your desktop, you can fire up Chrome on your mobile device and quickly open the pages you were just reading on your PC.

Google Chrome requires Android 4.0 or higher to run. I took it for a spin on my HP TouchPad today, and it feels ridiculously fast — especially when visiting pages that it can preload in the background.

Chrome also makes it easy to open an incognito window when you don’t want sites you visit to be saved to you history.

Mozilla has been offering mobile versions of the Firefox web browser for Android since earlier this year, but up until recently the browser was built using Mozilla’s own tools rather than native Android UI widgets. This week the developers released the first nightly builds of Firefox which use native Android tools to reduce memory usage and improve speed.

You can download the latest builds from the Firefox Nightly site. Keep in mind, these are pre-release versions of the browser, and may be rather buggy compared with the latest stable release available from the Android Market. But the latest nightlies will give you an idea of where Mozilla is going with Firefox.

The new browser does away with the menus to the left and right side of the screen. Instead you can pull up preferences, the add-ons manager, or bookmarks by tapping your Android menu button. You can open new tabs and access a list of open browser tabs by tapping the plus button next to the URL bar.

The new version is designed to support existing plugins for Firefox mobile and supports Android 2.2 and up.  Soon Mozilla will add an improved start page as well as the ability to synchronize your data between browsers. A tablet-friendly version is also in the works.

Mozilla has released Firefox 8 for Windows, Mac and Linux… and today the company also released an updated version of its mobile browser for Google Android. You can grab Firefox 8 for free from the Android Market.

While the latest version of Firefox mobile has the same version number as its desktop cousin and uses the same rendering engine, the desktop and mobile versions of Firefox received some different features in this update.

The desktop browser, for instance, added support Twitter search integration, while that feature is only available for Firefox Mobile if you install the Twitter Address Bar Search add-on.

The Android version gets a few distinctive new features. For instance, there’s now support for a master password which you can use to encrypt all your saved usernames and passwords.

Users can also now save bookmarks as icons on their home screen, allowing you to quickly open any website or web app in Firefox with a single click.

You can read more about Firefox 8 for Android in the release notes.

Opera launched new versions of its mobile web browsers for pretty much every mobile operating system imaginable today… except Android. And that’s only because the Android apps received the same update a few weeks ago.

But if you’re using iOS, BlackBerry, S60, or J2ME you can grab Opera Mini 6.5 for your device. Opera Mobile 11.5 is also available for S60. And MeeGo users can check out a new Opera Mobile Labs 11.5 release for tablets and netbooks.

The key difference between Opera Mobile and Mini is that Opera Mini relies on remote servers to compress data before sending web pages and other content to your device, while Opera Mobile uses your device’s hardware to render web content (although you can turn on Opera Turbo mode to enable the same sort of compression).

The biggest change in the new versions is a tool that helps you visualize how much data you’ve used — and how much data you’ve saved by using Opera’s compression technology. Opera has also made it easier to bookmark a website quickly by tapping a star in the URL bar. Sure, that feature is pretty common in desktop web browsers, but you don’t see it on many mobile browsers yet.

The developers behind the popular Dolphin web browser for mobile devices have released version 7.0 for Android. The key new feature is a cloud synchronization option that lets you sync your bookmarks, gestures, and other preferences across all your phones and tablets.

The new service is called Dolphin Connect and right now it only supports Android — but support for the Dolphin Browser for iPhone and iPad is in the works. Eventually you’ll be able to sync your preferences between an iPad and an Android phone.

Dolphin is one of the most powerful, customizeable browsers for Android. Users can create custom gestures, install add-ons to extend the functionality of the browser, and use the Webzine mode to view some websites in a clean, magazine-style layout.

Dolphin Browser HD 7.0 tweaks the Webzine feature by displaying the 16 most popular channels on the home screen — which kind of suggests to me that I’m not the only person who isn’t really using the Webzine feature and Dolphin is looking for ways to highlight it.

For now Dolphin 7.0 is available exclusively from the GetJar app store. On October 23rd it should go live in the Android Market.

For some baffling reason Google currently offers two different web browsers based on the open source WebKit. There’s the Android web browser. And then there’s the Chrome web browser for Windows, Mac and Linux computers. Chrome is also at the core of the Chrome OS operating system… which is basically an operating system based on Chrome.

While both projects use the same basic rendering engines, the Chrome and Android web browsers don’t have all the same features.

Chrome supports browser tabs, bookmark and password synchronization between computers, and the installation of apps from the Web App Store. There’s also a new feature called Native Client for Chrome which lets you run desktop-style apps in your web browser while avoiding malware by keeping those apps from making deep changes to your operating system.

The Android web browser does a decent job of letting you surf the web on an Android phone or tablet. But it would be nice if all the hard work Google has put into improving the Chrome browser also benefited Android users. Now it looks like it might.

The folks at Recombu noticed a discussion on the Chromium Code site that suggest Google is preparing to built a version of Chrome that can run on Android.

At this point it’s not clear if Chrome might eventually replace the existing Android browser, or if it will simply be available as a third party app for those that want to download it from the Android Market. But at the very least, some of Chrome’s key features such as profile synchronization and speed dial-style apps would be welcome features in Android.

Right now you have to rely on third party browsers such as Dolphin HD or Opera Mobile if you want those features.

The first version of Firefox for Android tablets is now available for download. The latest nightly builds of Mozilla’s web browser for Android include a new user interface designed for Android devices with large, high resolution displays.

Firefox for tablets offers the same basic features as the smartphone version of the web browser, including Mozilla’s rendering engine, Firefox Sync capabilities which let you keep your bookmarks and other data synchronized with the desktop version of the app, and support for add-ons.

The tablet version also has a minimalist theme that’s designed to play well with Android 3.0 Honeycomb, an awesomebar with tabs letting you flip between bookmarks, history, and pages from your desktop browser, and a new way to view browser tabs. In landscape mode, all your open windows hang out in a persistent area on the left side of the screen. When you flip to portrait orientation, there’s an icon at the top of the screen which you can tap to view a list of browser tabs.

I’m not sold on the persistent tabs in landscape mode — just because Android tablets have more screen real estate than smartphones doesn’t mean people want to constantly look at thumbnails for websites they’re not currently reading. But at least Mozilla is trying new things. Many Android web browsers look the same, so it’s good to see someone thinking a bit outside of the box.

You can download the latest nightly build of Firefox Mobile for Android from Mozilla.

via Android Guys

The folks behind the popular Dolphin web browser for Android recently expanded into two new areas: tablets and iOS. Now hot on the heels of the company’s first iPhone web browser and its first browser for Android tablets, Dolphin has launched a free iPad app.

Dolphin Browser HD for the iPad has all the feature we’ve come to expect, including:

• Browser tabs which let you flip between web pages without minimizing the current page first
• Support for gesture-based navigation
• A sidebar that lets you access bookmarks and other data by swiping the browser window left or right
• A full-screen mode
• Support for user agent switching so you can see desktop or mobile versions of websites

The developers are also running a contest through September 14th to celebrate the launch of the iPad app by giving away an iPad 2.