Webview app vs Chromium fork for building custom Android Browser

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I'm starting work on an Android custom browser.

I'm exploring two options:

  1. Build an app which utilizes the underlying Webview on Android to display the website, but handles other app features separately -- like multiple tabs, some basic filtering of websites, system volume adjustement -- things like that.

  2. Build an app by forking the Chromium project. My assumption is that this would not rely on the underlying Webview installed on Android and essentially function as a standalone app.

I'm trying to understand the pros and cons of going with both approaches.

It seems like the upfront work for #1 may be less, but I may be able to more fully customize the project by going with #2. I'm also thinking about testing across various devices (which have various versions of Webview installed) and assuming that by going with #2, I can at least take the underlying Webview out of the testing equation.

What am I missing here? Are there major differences between these two approaches that I should be considering?

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