I'm not having the freezing issue with Chrome (28). But I think there're some major usability issues. I cannot figure out how to input a date. If I input "8" then "16" it's current value is 08/16/yyyy with the "yyyy" part selected. If I continue to input "2" for the year part it changes to 1902. Inputting "20" will reset the date picker back to mm/dd/yyyy.
I believe you are describing the native datepicker, I am seeing the same weirdness. Be advised, the calendar polyfilled calendar is only active when a native implementation is not detected, or you force it to be used. This may be a bug in Chrome itself.
Yes you're correct. It's neat that it uses the native datepicker if available, but one area of concern is they use different date input formats. Native forces mm/dd/yyyy while the polyfill suggests yyyy-mm-dd (though it accepts the former format as well).
