The Last Stand of Chrome on iOS 9.3.5: Compatibility, Security, and the Evolution of Mobile Browsing
Google dropped support for iOS 9 and 10 in Chrome 80 (February 2020). The official reason was that maintaining compatibility with older WebKit forks became unsustainable. However, the deeper reason is that Apple’s requirement that all browsers use the system WebKit meant that older iOS versions simply could not run a newer WebKit. Without a newer WebKit, Chrome cannot support newer web standards, and without those standards, the browser becomes irrelevant for modern sites. Google faced a choice: invest significant engineering effort into backporting features to a dying platform (iOS 9, with <1% of active devices by 2020) or focus on iOS 12+ where the majority of users lived. They chose the latter. chrome for ios 9.3.5
Consequently, the “Chrome” user on iOS 9.3.5 receives Google’s user interface, bookmark sync, and tab management, but not Google’s rendering or JavaScript speed. Pages render with the same underlying engine as Safari on that same iOS version—meaning slow, often broken layouts for modern websites that rely on ES6+ features or newer security protocols. The Last Stand of Chrome on iOS 9
To understand Chrome on iOS 9.3.5, one must first understand Apple’s long-standing restriction: all browsers on iOS must use the system’s built-in WebKit rendering engine. Unlike desktop Chrome, which uses Google’s Blink engine, iOS Chrome has always been a wrapper around Apple’s Safari WebKit. The Chrome version compatible with iOS 9.3.5 is approximately Chrome 70–72 (released late 2018–early 2019). This version lacks critical modern web APIs: CSS Grid improvements, modern Flexbox bug fixes, WebRTC updates, and most importantly, modern JavaScript engine optimizations (JIT compilation for third-party browsers was restricted until iOS 14). Without a newer WebKit, Chrome cannot support newer
(e.g., "draft a long essay using the Chrome browser running on my iPhone 4s with iOS 9.3.5"), please clarify, as that is a different request. The above essay is about that browser version. Let me know how I can refine the response further.