android Cut mobile web data in half with the new Chrome app for iOS and Android

sincity · January 15, 2014

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/software/Chrome/chrome_mobile_data_compression-470-75.jpg

Google has announced a new feature for the Chrome app on iOS and Android that it says can cut data usage from web browsing by up to half.

The "data compression and bandwidth management" feature will compress mobile browsing data in real time as you browse, Google Software Engineer and "Data Squasher Extraordinaire" Matt Welsh wrote in a Google blog post.

Welsh wrote that a fifth of U.S. adults do the bulk of their web browsing on mobile devices.

He added that Google will be rolling the feature out to iOS and Android in updates arriving "over the next few days."

Plus translation

When the feature does arrive, you can enable it in the settings menu under "bandwidth management" and then "reduce data usage." From here you can also track how much data you're saving every month with the feature (hence the charts above).

In addition to compressing web data on the fly, the feature will also enable mobile Chrome's safe browsing mode, which reportedly "helps protect you from malicious webpages."

Welsh also discussed another new feature coming to Chrome on iOS "in the coming days:" Google Translate.

The feature will work exactly as it does in the desktop and Android versions of Chrome: when the browser detects a page is in another language, it will ask you whether you want to translate it with the tap of a button.

The next update to Chrome for Android will also allow users to save website bookmarks from within the browser itself with a tap of the toolbar menu.