I find the default browser on iPad very limiting. First of all you can only a have limited number of tabs open and if you open more tabs it closes the earliest opened tab. Another drawback is that you can't search from the address bar. In fact, the pop-up keyboard hides the space bar key. I have been spoiled by the Chrome omnibox.
Same here. For me the Omnibox is the biggest "lock-in" feature that keeps me on Chrome - not that I've had any reason to switch to something else, or anything. The 2nd biggest one would probably be the pre-rendering of webpages.
Personally I much prefer the 'awesome bar' in Firefox, for the single reason that it indexes page content and auto-completes based on title tags, page titles, etc. This is the one feature that I really miss when using Chrome.
I too like the awesome bar in Firefox much better than Chrome's omnibox (mainly that it can match strings inside the URL). The FauxBar extension for Chrome is a pretty good replacement:
> If you open more tabs it closes the earliest opened tab.
This is the case with Chrome for iOS too. At least on my original iPad, Chrome trash the first tab after I open the 4th tab (tested this with Reddit front page) where I can open up to the 9 tabs limit in Mobile Safari. I guess this is just the original iPad showing its age. Things seems to works better on iPhone 4, but my point is Chrome for iOS do trash tabs.
This is more likely an issue with Chrome for iOS and the first iPad than Mobile Chrome as a whole though, as I don't get any trashing on my iPhone either. I closed all apps in the background and it seems to be able to handle a little bit more:
So the behavior seems to be even worse in Chrome, as in Safari you can have 9 tabs open at most no matter what, whereas in iOS Chrome you don't know when a tab will be trashed.
I don't see the need for keeping open more than 9 tabs in Safari. Pages I need later, I save in Reading List or Instapaper, which also have the advantage of being available on all my other devices.
One thing that might help is that even when safari closes a tab, if you tap and hold the + button you will see a list of closed tabs and you can reopen any that were closed.
