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One of the touted features of Android 5 is the updates of WebView through Google Play.

The official documents state:

The initial release for Android 5.0 includes a version of Chromium for WebView based on the Chromium M37 release...

and:

Although WebView has been based on Chromium since Android 4.4, the Chromium layer is now updatable from Google Play.

  1. Does it mean that the default built-in "Android Browser" is now actually Chromium M37 after updating to Android 5.0?

  2. Does it mean that the default "Android Browser" auto-updates itself like the evergreen browsers on desktop? Assuming Play Store account is set up.

After updating a Samsung Galaxy S4 to Android 5.0, What's My User Agent? shows that the default Internet Browser is "Chrome 34". What's going on?

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It means that applications that use the WebView class (for displaying a web page within an app, basically) will now use the Chromium version of WebView and thus render things the same way Chrome does, rather than the old way. This also allows it to be updated so that any rendering/other errors can be fixed, instead of you permanently being unable to see/use certain pages or elements within WebViews.

And yes, the old Android browser has been replaced by Chrome as the default bundled with Android.

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  • Thanks for answer. Does this mean the default Android Browser (the icon called "Internet") will be using the auto-updated WebView? Because despite some updates to the webview, the default browser still shows up as "Chrome 34" in whatsmyuseragent.com
    – light
    Oct 2, 2015 at 7:52

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