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Last week Google rolled out Chrome and Chrome OS 52 for all supported platforms. This week, Chrome 52 for Android has received an update that promises to deliver faster video playback in your mobile browser.
With the release of Chrome 52 on Android, video playback has been improved for speed and power efficiency. This means you will see smoother playback and faster load times. Videos will now start playing sooner, instead of pausing briefly before loading, and your battery will last longer.
-Google Chrome Team
While many improvements and enhancements may go unnoticed, you can see in the video a very significant increase in video load time. Google is also touting reduced power consumption for videos and is currently working on implementing similar improvements to their desktop browser.
Aside from better speed and battery life, HTML5 videos now work with Chrome’s Data Saver Mode. According the the Chrome blog post, when enabled, this can reduce data usage up to 50%. It does so by rendering a “lightweight version” of the video.
Battery life and speed are definitely on my top 5 list of must-haves in a mobile device. It’s very encouraging seeing Google’s developers aggressively seeking ways to improve those attributes from the software side.
You can find this update and other recent changes to Chrome in the link below.
