Chrome for Android update brings data saver for videos, smarter file downloads

Google is introducing major improvements to Chrome for Android to make browsing faster, and downloads seamless for people on slow network. The announcement is part of company’s 'Next Billion' push to bring India’s next billion people to the internet.

At its 'Google for India' event in New Delhi, the company announced today that the Data Saver feature on Chrome for Android now also works with video content. The company claims that using the compression, a user can save up to 67 percent of data when viewing a video in MP4 format.

In addition, Chrome for Android now automatically optimizes HTTP pages when a user is on a slow network. These optimized pages are as much as 90 percent lighter than their regular counterpart, and load twice as faster.

Google is also improving Chrome’s download capability. On Android’s Chrome app, users will see an option to download web pages, music, pictures, and other media content for consuming later. The downloaded content will be stored within Chrome.

More importantly, the company is improving the way Chrome downloads content. Google says Chrome can now automatically pause the download when the phone is out of network coverage, and resume it when the phone is in a good network area again. Earlier downloads failed on Chrome if the network broke in the middle.

All the features are now live on Chrome beta app for Android starting today. Stable version of the mobile browser will get these features later this year.

At the event today, Google said that its data saving feature helps save as much as 330TB of data every month.