On Android 2.3’s Web Browser’s Support for HTML5 and Mobile Web Apps

Maximiliano Firtman:

The new browser does not support any of the promised and expected features. It seems to be the same browser with some minor core updates, such as support for better exception handling with new object constructors like SyntaxException, EvalError or URIError.

There is still no support for SVG, Animated GIF, Web Sockets or other HTML5 stuff (besides HTML5 compatibility in 2.2). And there is no support for Device Motion, accelerometer, camera or speech support, as promised in Google IO (see video1 — starting at 6:00 — and video2).

Apple’s “closed” iOS web browser has better support for mobile web apps than Google’s “open” Android browser. I’ll bet Google closes that gap eventually, but it’s curious that they haven’t yet.

★ Tuesday, 11 January 2011