3 reasons why I'll never fully switch to Brave and still have Chrome on my phone
Brave is great at what it does, but I still need Chrome in my life
There are several reasons why the author has not fully switched from Chrome to Brave on their phone. Firstly, Brave's Shields, while effective at blocking ads and other annoyances, often break websites, particularly during online shopping. Aggressive or even standard settings can interfere with checkout pages, embeds, Amazon product pages, and basic news sites.
The author has to constantly adjust settings for each site they visit, causing unnecessary friction and disrupting their browsing flow. Secondly, Brave's Shields can cause fingerprint protection, cookie control, and script blocking issues that further hinder the browsing experience. For example, even well-known websites like Levi's may fail to load properly or prevent access to the checkout page.
The author frequently switches back to Chrome to complete purchases as it is faster than adjusting Brave's settings. Despite Brave's success at blocking ads and offering features like offline YouTube playlist playback, the constant cat-and-mouse game with YouTube prevents it from maintaining flawless performance. YouTube often updates its features, outpacing Brave's ability to adapt, resulting in broken playback, buffering issues, and console errors.
Lastly, Brave's battery usage has become a concern for the author. Although the browser generally doesn't overheat their phone, recent experiences have shown unusual battery drain when using Brave heavily throughout the day. Brave utilizes a Wallet, Leo AI, News, Rewards, and Sync features, some of which consume more CPU than necessary, leading to higher battery usage.
This has prompted the author to switch back to Chrome as a backup when battery life is a priority. Although Brave is an excellent browser, the author believes its current flaws make it difficult to completely replace Chrome on their phone. They still rely on Chrome for online shopping and YouTube, acknowledging that these issues may be resolved in the future, allowing them to fully transition to Brave.
Written by urgent.news from Android Police's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
