Google has updated the stable channel of Chrome for Android to Chrome 26, which offers two new syncing features designed to save you a bit of time on mobile devices.

You can grab the latest version of Chrome for Android from the Google Play Store.

This release has two noteworthy features — password syncing and form autofill syncing. Keeping track of passwords is a pain and let’s face it, most mobile password managers leave much to be desired. With the new Chrome for Android you can sync and access your saved passwords across devices.

Even if you prefer not to have Chrome store your passwords for you, the form autofill syncing is equally handy — especially given how tedious it can be to fill out forms using your mobile device’s tiny keyboard.

Like all of Chrome’s syncing features, you’ll need to be signed into your Google account to use the new password and autofill sync.

This release also fixed a few bugs and offers some modest performance and stability improvements. For more details, see the Chrome blog.

In fact, even if you already have Adblock Plus installed on your Android phone you should install this latest release direct from the source since the older, Play Store-based versions will no longer be receiving updates.

To install Adblock Plus manually you’ll need to make sure that you’ve enabled your phone to install software from “unknown sources” (you can enable this in Settings under either Applications or Security, depending on which version of Android you have). Then just head over to the Adblock Plus site and hit the download link.

A number of people in the comments on the Adblock Plus site have reported installation problems with various Android phones, but I had no issues installing Adblock Plus on a Galaxy Nexus using the latest beta of Opera Mobile.

Among the notable changes in this release are the automatic updates — which no longer require the Google Play version — a new user interface theme and a fix for a bug that would sometimes cause blank pages in Chrome for Android. For the full details on everything that’s new, be sure to check out the release notes.

Google has pulled the popular Adblock Plus and other ad-blocking apps from the Google Play store.

To be clear, that means Adblock Plus and its ilk are no longer available for Android users. So far nothing has changed in the Chrome Web Store, which still hosts plenty of ad-blocking add-ons for Google’s web browser.

The move shouldn’t be surprising given that ad-blocking software cuts into Google’s bottom line, though that’s not exactly why Google says the apps were removed. The company says that such apps violate the Play Store’s terms of service, specifically that they cause “interference with another service or product in an unauthorized manner.”

Naturally if you’ve already installed AdBlock Plus — or any other affected ad-blocking app — it will continue to work, though there will be no more updates. For that reason, Wladimir Palant, creator of AdBlock Plus, suggests users “install our next release from our website once it is out.”

Palant calls the move “surprising” and wonders if it suggests “a course change at Google.” It doesn’t seem particularly surprising to me, but Palant’s thoughts on all the “for rooted phones only” apps currently available in Play seem well-founded:

Until recently the main distinction between Android and iPhone was that Android allowed you to install any app as long as it wasn’t malicious (meaning that it’s obvious what the app does). Google Play still allows apps stating “for rooted phones only” but I wonder whether these are next on the list to be removed — each of them performs “unauthorized actions”.

What’s really surprising is that Google ever allowed these apps in the first place.

Webmonkey.com in the latest Chrome for Android Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey.

Google has released a major update to its Chrome for Android web browser.

The latest version of Chrome for Android — available in the Google Play Store — features an updated version of Google’s V8 JavaScript engine, which has finally been optimized for mobile devices. That means Chrome for Android should now be faster than the old, stock Android web browser.

According to Google, the latest version of Chrome for Android improves on Google’s Octane benchmark tests by 25 percent on average. While benchmarks aren’t always the best indicators of real-world performance gains, the speed boost should mean that JavaScript-heavy pages like Gmail or Facebook load a bit faster.

Our friends over at Ars Technica put the latest version of Chrome for Android through the paces using not just Google’s own Octane test, but the Sunspider and Kraken benchmarks as well. The results don’t always feature quite the speed improvement that Google claims, but this is without a doubt the fastest version of Chrome for Android yet.

The performance improvements aren’t just in JavaScript either. Scrolling webpages is much smoother and, most noticeable in my testing, pinch-to-zoom is much more responsive with none of the stuttering and lag that marred previous releases.

Other nice improvements include the ability to keep web audio playing even if you switch to another app (handy for music streaming sites), and support for coming web standards like CSS Filters.

Google has also released an update for Chrome on iOS, though the changes on the iOS side are largely cosmetic. Apple’s App Store policies prevent Google from including the V8 engine in Chrome, so iOS users won’t see any speed improvements. There are however a few design tweaks, like a unified search/URL bar and a quick way to see the entire history of a tab by holding down the back button.

Google’s Ro.me experiment running in Chrome for Android. Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey

If you’ve already installed the beta channel of Chrome for Android you’ll be automatically updated to the latest release. If you’d like to try it out, head over to the Google Play Store (unfortunately, searching the Play Store for “Chrome Beta” doesn’t work). It’s worth noting that Chrome and Chrome Beta install as two different apps.

WebGL is a JavaScript API for adding hardware-accelerated 2-D and 3-D rendering to the HTML5 Canvas tag. It’s the cornerstone of many sophisticated animations on the web — think cutting-edge games or interactive videos like Google’s earlier Ro.me experiment.

The WebGL API is based on OpenGL, a desktop graphics standard, which means WebGL can run on many different devices — your laptop, your phone, even your TV. That said, older Android phones will likely be a disappointment when it comes to rendering complex WebGL animations.

The latest Chrome for Android Beta gives users access to chrome://flags, a hidden menu page that allows interested developers to run experimental features. Head to that address and scroll down to find the option to turn on WebGL.

Other handy developer tools in chrome://flags include an FPS counter, which shows a page’s frame rate, CSS Shader support and the same experimental WebKit features option you’ll find in the desktop release of Chrome.

Chrome for Android beta channel. Image: Scott Gilbertson

Starting today, you can install a beta channel release of Chrome for Android on any device running Android 4.0 or better. Note that it appears that you need to follow that link to get the beta channel release. Searching in the Google Play Store did not show the beta channel. The beta channel can be installed alongside the normal release channel.

The current release for the beta channel is Chrome 25, which is a significant update for the mobile version of Chrome, adding support for the new CSS Flexible Box Model syntax, dynamic viewport units (useful for responsive designs) and CSS calc(). The Android version of Chrome also gets the same updated IndexDB and CSS Filters support we looked at in the desktop release.

The beta channel release should also be a bit faster. The Chromium blog claims that improvements to the V8 JavaScript engine give the browser a 25 to 30 percent improvement on Google’s Octane benchmark tests.

The beta channel for Android offers some new tricks in Chrome’s developer tools, notably “big improvements in measuring your mobile performance with the Timeline’s frames mode.” Google also says it’s easier to navigate and edit your active scripts in the revamped Sources panel.

For more details on everything that’s new in the beta channel of Chrome for Android be sure to read through the Chromium blog’s announcement.

H.264 video in Firefox for Android. Image: Scott Gilbertson.

Mozilla has added support for the H.264 video codec to its Firefox for Android mobile web browser.

Right now support is limited to Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) and Samsung phones running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Mozilla is working to fix some bugs that currently prevent H.264 from working on other devices. Support for older Gingerbread and Honeycomb Android devices is still in the works.

This is the first time Mozilla has released a web browser with support for the popular H.264 codec. The company previously refused to support H.264, citing royalty and licensing concerns. Instead Mozilla touted Google’s WebM codec, which offers many of the benefits of H.264 in a royalty-free package. Unfortunately for Firefox fans WebM has failed to gain ground against H.264.

Adobe’s Flash Player plugin can also play H.264 video and, until Adobe decided to abandon Flash for Android, that was Mozilla’s solution for H.264 video in Firefox for Android.

With WebM adoption lagging and Flash for Android dead, Mozilla found itself in a bind. Some estimates claim up to 80 percent of video on the web is encoded in H.264, forcing Mozilla to choose between supporting H.264 on Android or leaving Firefox users with no way to watch video on mobile devices. Fortunately for Firefox users, Mozilla decided to be practical and support H.264.

Technically the new H.264 support is not a part of Firefox, rather the browser is tapping into Android’s underlying H.264 support to decode video. That means royalty payments are covered by hardware makers, not Mozilla.

I tested Firefox for Android’s H.264 on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.1 and for the most part H.264 video worked without issue. Some popular video sharing sites, however, appear to be doing OS/browser detection rather than feature detection — I’m looking at you Vimeo — which means that, even though your phone can play the video, Vimeo thinks it can’t.

Hopefully Vimeo and other sites doing the same thing will fix this soon because Mozilla is planning to bring the same H.264 support to the desktop. As with Firefox for Android, desktop Firefox won’t have its own decoder, but will rely on OS-level H.264 decoders. For end users though the result will be the same — video that just works.

The Firefox Marketplace in Android. Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey.

Mozilla is taking the wraps off the Firefox Marketplace, the company’s new web-app store for Firefox on Android.

Marketplace apps are only available in the newly-updated Firefox for Android 18, which is currently in the Aurora channel. To get Aurora installed on your Android phone you’ll need to be using Android 2.2 or better and make sure that the setting to allow apps from “Unknown sources” is checked. Once that’s done, head to the Aurora mobile download page and grab the latest release.

Once Aurora is installed the new Firefox Marketplace is available under the Options Menu. Choose the “Tools” item and select “Apps”. From there you’ll see a link to the Marketplace.

Given the convoluted installation and pre-beta status of Firefox 18, this release is obviously not meant for everyone. It does, however, offer developers a look at what Mozilla has been creating.

Right now the Firefox Marketplace is still rough around the edges. So far there isn’t even a way to accept payments, one of the much-touted aspects of the Marketplace. Mozilla says that payments and other common app store features like ratings and reviews are coming soon. There are plenty of free apps available already though, including Twitter, Lanyard, Todoist and quite a few games.

Installing an app from the Firefox Marketplace is as simple as clicking a button, which installs the app and adds a shortcut to the Android applications list. Mozilla has done a great job of making web-app installation indistinguishable from native apps on Android.

Firefox apps in the Android app switcher. Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey

It’s worth asking though, even if Firefox Marketplace apps matched native apps in performance, does you need web apps on Android?

The answer for most people is probably going to be no. However, building out the Firefox Marketplace on Android now ensures that the bugs are worked out and that there’s a smoothly functioning app store ready to go when Firefox OS officially launches.

And there are definitely some bugs and quirks in this early release, like the fact that in Android’s app switcher all Firefox Marketplace apps are labeled simply “App” rather than the name of the application, which can make finding what you’re after tricky when you have a lot of apps open at once.

The main purpose of this release is to work out exactly these types of kinks. As Mozilla Labs Engineering Manager Bill Walker writes on the Labs blog, “our goal is to collect as much real-life feedback as possible about the Marketplace’s design, usability, performance, reliability, and content.”

Developers interested in building apps for the Firefox Marketplace should head over to the Mozilla Developer Network and the Marketplace Developer Hub, which contain extensive documentation, FAQs and emulation tools for building Marketplace apps.

Webmonkey is in your Opera Mini Smart Page, making you smarter. Image: Webmonkey.

Opera software has released Opera Mini 7.5 for Android.

To update or install Opera Mini on your Android device, head on over to m.opera.com or Google Play.

The latest version of Opera’s lightweight, speedy mobile browser — not to be confused with the much more full-featured Opera Mobile — adds a new feature, the “Smart Page,” for what Opera calls “social snacks.”

The new Smart Page is a social media and news aggregator, offering one-stop access to your friends’ updates from Facebook or Twitter, as well as news from the websites you visit most frequently.

Because Opera Mini proxies your internet connection through Opera’s servers, making page downloads considerably smaller and faster, the company can use the sites you’ve visited to compile what amounts to ad hoc feeds for your most visited sites. As with all things automated, the more you use Opera Mini the better your news results will be.

Opera Mini is also available for iOS and other platforms, but so far this latest version is only available on Android. An Opera spokesperson declined to comment on when other Opera Mini releases might be updated.

To see the new Smart Page feature in action, check out this video:

Image: Amazon.

Amazon is once again jumping into the online mapping fray with a new Maps API for Android developers building apps for the Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD tablets. While it’s just for Android developers at the moment, several of Amazon’s other APIs have started small and grown into web-wide offerings.

Unfortunately, unlike like Amazon’s long since shuttered A9 map tools, it doesn’t appear to actually be using Amazon data. In fact, the new Maps API is really just an API wrapper around Nokia’s maps and geocoding interface, which also now powers the maps on Flickr.com.

Like Apple’s iOS 6, Foursquare and other high-profile Google Maps defectors, the Amazon Maps API seems to exist primarily as an option for those who’d like to avoid the Google Maps API. Amazon’s announcement touts the API’s “simple migration path for developers who are already using the native Google Maps API on Android,” but neglects to mention any benefits developers might gain from dropping Google’s API.

In this early beta offering Amazon’s Maps API doesn’t have any features above and beyond Google’s API. The Amazon Maps API offers most of the same features you’ll find in the Google Maps API, including street maps, satellite images and custom overlays for landmarks and points of interest, but lacks street-view imagery, terrain maps and other features found in Google’s offering.

If you’d like to give the Amazon Maps API a try in your Android app, head on over to Amazon’s new Maps API site to request access.