A issue with Chrome that makes Android unusable for me but Apple is so expensive

[Leonccyiu]

Hello

I don't expect to achieve much by writing this as I wasn't able to get any help on the Chrome help forums but here goes.

I have an Apple iPad and Safari on iOS and I have never unintentionally lost my Private tabs in my years of using it whether you accidentally close Safari, the device runs out of battery, or your update iOS, your tabs remain there unless you choose to close them all.

On iOS, you also won't have the problem of accidentally closing all apps like Android, and iOS is a highly stable OS, whereas I've had several occurrences albeit rare that have caused my phone to crash and restart, and when it does, it's devastating to me as not only have I lost all my incognito tabs, but a lot of my tabs in Chrome don't restore properly. The several instances of my phone crashing and restarting include, when it got too hot on a very hot sunny day, trying an external DAC that didn't work well with the driver, Snapchat etc.

I have tried to raise the issue on the Chrome help forums with someone else agreeing with me. On Chrome, closing Chrome, updating Chrome will cause all your incognito tabs to disappear. I like to do my browsing in incognito mode as I don't like having to manually clear my history, cache etc, I find it more fluid.

The Google expert disagreed with the idea and said that would be akin to removing incognito mode, but this is about deciding when you want to end your incognito session, and when you want your tabs closed like Safari on iOS.

The second issue raised was the expert claiming that all incognito session data is only stored in ram, but I think there's good evidence that this isn't the case because when you have too many incognito tabs open, when you switch back to chrome after using another app, I can see all the incognito tabs being restored, and I assume that the session data has been stored in local storage in an encrypted form, and restored to ram when Chrome is active again. I have tried to screen record this behavior but haven't had much luck, and there isn't another google engineer to come forward to explain how this works.

I found the person who answered my request to be quite rude and arrogant and dismissive, and not how I would want to be treated as a customer.

I find it difficult to switch to iOS as in my country (UK) iPhones are charged at a premium compared to the US even accounting for sales tax, and many specifications are worse than android such as lower screen resolutions, lack of headphone jack, no expandable storage etc. This is not to mention that Android phones can be quite a lot cheaper than iPhones.

Since both companies hold such sway over us, rather than the customer being right, they are dictating their will on us.

Apple and Google are engaged in many spats such as Google not encoding 4k videos and hdr in h264 whereas Apple not supporting vp9, and the losers are us the users.

While the web is an open standard which allowed Apple to break Microsoft's monopoly on computing, apps creating a duopoly.

I feel completely screwed over by both companies, and at the moment I might not have much choice but to buy a rip-off iPhone with poorer specs and limitations (except the CPU) over my existing phone.

In an ideal world, I wish Google would listen to people and rectify this simple fix, but this has taught me a lesson on the dark way our world is going now that a few monopoly tech companies essentially run the world.

I've tried contacting the creators of Session Buddy, no response, I'll try with XDA developers and Reddit, I don't expect much.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central!

The second issue raised was the expert claiming that all incognito session data is only stored in ram, but I think there's good evidence that this isn't the case because when you have too many incognito tabs open, when you switch back to chrome after using another app, I can see all the incognito tabs being restored, and I assume that the session data has been stored in local storage in an encrypted form, and restored to ram when Chrome is active again. I have tried to screen record this behavior but haven't had much luck, and there isn't another google engineer to come forward to explain how this works.

The way Chrome currently works, incognito tabs will remain in RAM until you either close the tabs yourself, or you tap the Chrome notification in the swipedown notification panel that reminds you that incognito tabs are still open. So if you have a bunch of incognito tabs open, then you tap Home, then run a bunch of other apps, you should still see the Chrome incognito icon in the notification bar. As long as that icon is still there, opening Chrome will still bring you back to those open tabs. If you swipe the notification panel down, you'll see that it says "Chrome -- Close all incognito tabs." Tapping it will then close all of those tabs, and that history will be lost.

It's never cool to be rude or arrogant in a forum, but I can understand what that other person was thinking -- incognito mode is intended to be very transient, and if there were an easy way to retrieve your history in incognito mode, it wouldn't be particularly incognito.

 

[Leonccyiu]

Welcome to Android Central!


The way Chrome currently works, incognito tabs will remain in RAM until you either close the tabs yourself, or you tap the Chrome notification in the swipedown notification panel that reminds you that incognito tabs are still open. So if you have a bunch of incognito tabs open, then you tap Home, then run a bunch of other apps, you should still see the Chrome incognito icon in the notification bar. As long as that icon is still there, opening Chrome will still bring you back to those open tabs. If you swipe the notification panel down, you'll see that it says "Chrome -- Close all incognito tabs." Tapping it will then close all of those tabs, and that history will be lost.

It's never cool to be rude or arrogant in a forum, but I can understand what that other person was thinking -- incognito mode is intended to be very transient, and if there were an easy way to retrieve your history in incognito mode, it wouldn't be particularly incognito.

Thanks for the welcome to Android Central

I do believe there should be some kind of warning in the event that you accidentally press close all incognito tabs in the swipedown notification menu or close all apps in the app switcher.

If you've tried opening lots of incognito tabs, or lots of tabs in general which exceeds the ram on your phone, I am using an old LG G3 so I only have 2GB of ram, whereas Chrome would use to crash and exit, now Google have improved on this and I have been able to open probably over 200 incognito tabs, and I believe that they must be stored in local storage somehow, probably with encryption, as lossless compression itself probably wouldn't do the trick on its own.

On a PC, this is not a problem as you can use session buddy which automatically records which incognito tabs are open, but there are no extensions in Chrome for Android despite many Android phones now having 4+ GB of Ram.

I am not asking for the browsing history to be recorded or retrieved, but the open incognito tabs, everything else will be lost so long as the tabs remain.

If you have an iOS device, I'd suggest trying this yourself. Open Safari and open some private tabs. You can swipe away Safari, turn off your iphone/ipad, update iOS and your private tabs will still be there. Another thing is that if you're on private tabs, when external apps open links, they'll be in private browsing as well.

It's one of those great design decisions in iOS that results in it's popularity despite Android phones being cheaper, better specced and more powerful.

My phone has a 2560x1440 display whereas the iphone has 1334x750 or 1920x1080 for the plus, but that's huge, my phone has the same size screen and a much smaller footprint.

Nonetheless it's one of the sacrifices I'll have to make along with a big hole in my pocket and lack of expandable storage as this issue makes Android unusable to me.

 

[B. Diddy]

Oh well, I'm sorry that's a dealbreaker for you. Have you already tried other browsers, like Firefox or Opera?

If the latest iPhones are prohibitively expensive, then why not go for a used older version, like the 7? You don't necessarily have to succumb to the lure of the latest and greatest phone every time.

 

[chanchan05]

Try Samsung's Internet Browser. If you aren't using a Samsung phone, it's also available on the Play Store. I stopped using Chrome a year ago and never looked back. The 'secret tabs' in Samsung's browser survives through restarts. You can even password protect access to your secret tabs.

Although I think this is only available to phones running Marshmallow and up.

 

[belodion]

Also, as another UK resident, I paid £480 for my LG G3 when new, and £440 for my 128gb iPhone SE several months ago. The latter is currently available for £400.

 

[Leonccyiu]

Thanks for you suggestion, I am running Marshmallow, only the Samsung Internet Beta is available to me in the play store, I tried opening some Secret Tabs and restarting the browser and they disappeared, I'll try going to a phone store and trying this on a Samsung phone. If this works, that'll be great, while I'll still be limited to Samsung phones, at least their more affordable and feature rich than iPhones.

 

[Leonccyiu]

I can't seem to reply to the other posts, it says exceeded spam threshold 3/3
Thanks for your replies everyone

 

[Leonccyiu]

I've seen the iPhone SE, it's very affordable and I hope it gets updated soon.
The screen is a bit small for me but I can use my existing phone as a media player.

Have you tried private tabs in Safari on your iPhone SE where you open several private tabs, swipe it away and your tabs are still there when you re-open safari?

 

[belodion]

^ I haven’t, but I just tried it, and they were indeed still there.

 

[Leonccyiu]

Try Samsung's Internet Browser. If you aren't using a Samsung phone, it's also available on the Play Store. I stopped using Chrome a year ago and never looked back. The 'secret tabs' in Samsung's browser survives through restarts. You can even password protect access to your secret tabs.

Although I think this is only available to phones running Marshmallow and up.

Unfortunately I just tried this on the Samsung S8 and S7 using the latest Samsung internet and it doesn't work. I thought it might as the layout looks similar to Safari in iOS, and Samsung do have a history of following Apple.

At least the Samsung Support staff were more polite although their response was very vague and sounded like that of a PR company.

I tried Safari on the iPhone 8 plus, and just like any iOS device, the private tabs and regular tabs remain no matter what. I did encounter a problem trying to get the request desktop mode to work for a site.

I might try the Apple forums to ask how the Private Session data is stored, I doubt I'll be able to learn how to program a browser myself.

As expensive and poorer specced as the iPhones are, they do hold their value better and I might foot the bill or take a contract as at the end of the day, while I despise both companies, it's what works for me.

 

[chanchan05]

Unfortunately I just tried this on the Samsung S8 and S7 using the latest Samsung internet and it doesn't work. I thought it might as the layout looks similar to Safari in iOS, and Samsung do have a history of following Apple.

At least the Samsung Support staff were more polite although their response was very vague and sounded like that of a PR company.

I tried Safari on the iPhone 8 plus, and just like any iOS device, the private tabs and regular tabs remain no matter what. I did encounter a problem trying to get the request desktop mode to work for a site.

I might try the Apple forums to ask how the Private Session data is stored, I doubt I'll be able to learn how to program a browser myself.

As expensive and poorer specced as the iPhones are, they do hold their value better and I might foot the bill or take a contract as at the end of the day, while I despise both companies, it's what works for me.

Weird. In my case on my S7E, I'm sometimes surprised that the secret tabs are still saved.

 

[Leonccyiu]

Weird. In my case on my S7E, I'm sometimes surprised that the secret tabs are still saved.

I think I know where you're coming from, if you've switched to another app and android has cleared samsung internet from memory, when you switch back to samsung internet, you're on the regular tabs page, but when you switch back to secret tabs, they are still there.

However, if you exit Samsung internet or your phone crashes and restarts, they are all gone like Chrome. I am not sure about regular tabs is they all survive in tact, or you get some weird behavior like duplicate tabs, and the order has changed like chrome etc.

It looks like Safari for iOS is the only browser that restores your private tabs, as to how Apple does this, I have no idea. I tried to start a thread on the apple forums, but I doub't anyone will reply. I'll try XDA forums.

On Android, Chrome is probably the fastest browser and has the lowest memory footprint. Armorfly browser also works well. Firefox has extensions, but I find it more bloated and resource hungry than chrome, so even if someone was able to restore private tabs in firefox, I don't think it'd be a browser of choice.

I am sure that restoring private tabs must be do-able on android, it's either finding a developer willing to respond or trying to do something myself.

 

[eshropshire]

I think I know where you're coming from, if you've switched to another app and android has cleared samsung internet from memory, when you switch back to samsung internet, you're on the regular tabs page, but when you switch back to secret tabs, they are still there.

However, if you exit Samsung internet or your phone crashes and restarts, they are all gone like Chrome. I am not sure about regular tabs is they all survive in tact, or you get some weird behavior like duplicate tabs, and the order has changed like chrome etc.

It looks like Safari for iOS is the only browser that restores your private tabs, as to how Apple does this, I have no idea. I tried to start a thread on the apple forums, but I doub't anyone will reply. I'll try XDA forums.

On Android, Chrome is probably the fastest browser and has the lowest memory footprint. Armorfly browser also works well. Firefox has extensions, but I find it more bloated and resource hungry than chrome, so even if someone was able to restore private tabs in firefox, I don't think it'd be a browser of choice.

I am sure that restoring private tabs must be do-able on android, it's either finding a developer willing to respond or trying to do something myself.

I understand what you want, but I have to say I personally want it to behave the way it works. When I close the browser or the phone restarts I want my incognito tabs erased.

 

[chanchan05]

I understand what you want, but I have to say I personally wnt it to behave the way it works. When I close the browser or the phone restarts I want my incognito tabs erased.

This guy has a point though. They're incognito for a reason.

 

[Leonccyiu]

I understand what you want, but I have to say I personally wnt it to behave the way it works. When I close the browser or the phone restarts I want my incognito tabs erased.

I believe that we should have the choice, in Safari in iOS, you can close all your private tabs by holding on the tabs icon and selecting close all tabs. If that doesn't suffice, you could easily install Chrome on your iOS device.

Safari for MacOS behaves more like the other Desktop browsers because on a desktop platform, there are fewer causes of your browser unintentionally closing.

I want the incognito tabs to be restored in the event of the browser being unintentionally closed which can happen for a host of reasons on a mobile platform for example a pending software update, a crash and restart due to OS instability, dropping your phone and the battery falling out etc.

Or, whereas in iOS, you cannot close all open apps at once, in Android, you can hit that button by accident, or you can accidentally hit the close all incognito tabs in the notification menu.

That's why I believe by default that Apple is right that your incognito tabs should be restored after the browser is closed of your phone restarts, and your tabs should only be closed when you choose to.

 

[Leonccyiu]

This guy has a point though. They're incognito for a reason.

They're incognito so that your session data such as history, cookies, passwords are not saved, and trackers are blocked.

When your incognito tabs are restored in Safari, it's just the tabs that are restored, all other session data such as the cookies from browsing Amazon or Aliexpress are gone.

I don't see why having the incognito tabs being restored after the browser closes or phone restarts is not incognito as nothing else is saved, and you can close all your incognito tabs.

There are so many instances on a mobile device where your browser can be unintentionally closed as stated above, even on my iPad, I once left it plugged in charging and forgot that iOS automatically updates to the latest version if plugged in at a certain time, not a problem as all my tabs were still there.

 

[kramer5150]

Aren't there other www browsers you can try?... like LOTS of other browsers....??

 

[Leonccyiu]

There are lots of alternative browsers for Android, Firefox I think is the only one with extensions, so it may be possible to create an extension, but I think like firefox for desktop, extensions don't work with private browsing whereas in chromium based browsers you can allow extensions to work in incognito mode.

A lot of the other alternative browsers are chromium based browsers and therefore have similar behavior.

I tried installing Chrome Canary and the address bar is on the bottom, there's a quick link to your history where you can regularly clear it. I've unchecked all the tracking features, haven't signed in with my google account which I realise I can sign out on the main chrome, and selected a plain new tab page. It's still not as fast as incognito mode, but for now it's the best I can do. Even when you clear the browser history, your tabs remain, and that's because the open tabs is stored in a different database as your browser history.

I won't be able to convince google to provide the option of maintaining your open incognito tabs, but I'll try and seek help from xda developers to try and create something like session buddy that can read that database as in chrome, even your regular tabs are not always restored correctly. This is something that google doesn't take seriously whereas Apple treats this with utmost importance.

For the other alternative browsers, their sort of mobile versions of their desktop browsers, Apple is mobile first.

https://nexus5.gadgethacks.com/how-...-into-chromes-incognito-mode-android-0161057/
Since it may still be possible to open external links in incognito tabs, creating a session buddy for android maybe possible.

I am determined to do this for all the android users out there, as Apple phones are increasingly outdated by design and functionality.

 

[eshropshire]

They're incognito so that your session data such as history, cookies, passwords are not saved, and trackers are blocked.

When your incognito tabs are restored in Safari, it's just the tabs that are restored, all other session data such as the cookies from browsing Amazon or Aliexpress are gone.

I don't see why having the incognito tabs being restored after the browser closes or phone restarts is not incognito as nothing else is saved, and you can close all your incognito tabs.

There are so many instances on a mobile device where your browser can be unintentionally closed as stated above, even on my iPad, I once left it plugged in charging and forgot that iOS automatically updates to the latest version if plugged in at a certain time, not a problem as all my tabs were still there.

I understand what you are saying, but I still prefer my incognito browsing to only be in ram. I don't want anything saved on non volitale memory. We just see incognito mode differently. Evidently Google and Apple do as well.