Google Chrome 52 for Android brings improved video playback and data saving features

Google has unveiled Chrome 52 for Android and apparently, the highlight of the update is smoother video playback. Google claims to have worked on video playback on the Android version of Google Chrome. The claim that the biggest improvement is in video playback, wherein the initial lag before a video starts playing has been cut down significantly. They add that the update reduces the delay in video playback by 5 times.

They’ve also improved the Data Saver Mode on Android by allowing video playback in that mode as well. Videos played back in Data Saver Mode will be compressed by as much as 50 percent, reducing the impact on your data plan. Google claims that approximately one billion hours of video are viewed on Chrome for Android, which is why they’ve focussed on video for this release. Only HTML5 videos will benefit from these changes, however, so your favourite flash-based sites will see no improvement. More importantly, why are people still using flash? As Google points out, the improvement to initial load times are only really beneficial for short videos, which is what most people watch on their phones anyway. Longer videos will, of course, benefit from the Data Saver Mode’s video compression feature. Opera also recently announced improvements to video playback on their desktop browser, especially with regards to pop-out video.