A longtime Brave user says broken checkouts, glitchy YouTube and battery drain keep him from dropping Chrome on his phone. Here is what to know before trying it.
A writer who switched to the Brave browser long ago says he still keeps Chrome on his phone. In a piece for Android Police published Nov. 8, 2026, Akshay Bhalla names three problems: shopping pages that break, YouTube that sometimes stops working, and battery drain.
Brave is a web browser often described as a worthy alternative to Google Chrome. Its Shields feature blocks ads on websites. The writer still likes it and mostly uses it, but says these issues keep pulling him back to Chrome.
Shields can break the sites they touch. The writer says the Standard and Aggressive settings can break checkout pages, embedded content, Amazon product pages and even basic news sites. A tool called Dynamic Shields lets users adjust settings for each site, but lately he had to do that for nearly every site he visited.
One example was Levi's, whose site would not work properly or refused to load the checkout page. His fix was to copy the link and finish the purchase in Chrome, which was faster than tweaking Brave.
Brave does a solid job blocking YouTube ads, and a hidden setting lets him queue videos for offline playback. He even deleted the YouTube app. But Google keeps updating YouTube, and Brave sometimes cannot keep up. He describes broken playback, buffering and error messages that clear only after Brave catches up. Some new ads also slip through.
The writer says Brave usually runs fine, but heavy all-day use has recently drained his battery. Brave includes extras such as a Wallet, Leo AI, News, Rewards and Sync, which he says sometimes use more processing power than they should. His battery stats showed Brave near the top, and his phone got warm even during casual browsing. He adds that other users report similar problems in forums and on Reddit.
This is one person's experience, not a lab test. The article also does not include a response from Brave. Still, it points to a few simple habits for anyone trying Brave on a phone.
If you try Brave on your phone, keep a second browser for checkouts and glance at your battery stats now and then.
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