Chrome for Android is all about making you faster Google I/O 2013
Chrome for Android has some interesting changes coming that some of the beta testers have had a chance to play with already. These are aimed at making things more usable, more data efficient, better-looking, and you 26.8% cooler to those you’re attracted to.
Chrome for Android aims at using less data
Google’s engineers have been hard at work making things smaller, faster, and better. To do this they’ve introduced several new standards for images, video, and payments.
Among these new standards is a new image format called WebP which combines the best qualities of GIFs (transparencies, animation), while beating the image size and quality of JPEGs by 30%+ without sacrificing quality.
VP9 is also a replacement codec for h.264 video compression. It is royalty free and open source, offering about a 63% savings in data stream rate requirements without sacrificing video quality. YouTube will be implementing VP9 later this year for browsers, applications, and devices that support it.
Chrome for Android requires fewer steps
The shopping cart abandonment rate on mobile is significantly higher than on the web. This, according to Google, is because on average you have to complete 21 steps in order to enter your shipping address, name, phone, billing address, credit card info, etc. That sucks on mobile devices.
With new auto-complete features, you enter that information once and then are given the ability to share that information with a tap, whenever a website that needs it.
Chrome for Android beta can deliver most of this now
These new features will be delivered in the stable channel shortly. The beta channel also features options to reduce data usage and has for the past month, which will use a proxy that compresses data into the new video and picture formats for you server-side before sending it to your device. Expect this in stable, too.
Note: Using the proxy gives some of your browsing info to Google, so know that the data you’re receiving has all been filtered through Google and your browsing habits could be profiled.
