Google has launched its Chrome 56 on Android with fixes and new features for those users who want to install the browser.
Chrome 56 On Android's New Features
After being rolled out last week for Windows, Mac and PC, Chrome 56 is starting now its release for Android, according to the product's blog. This update includes some new minor features centered around the "New Tab" page, as well as a number of underlying performance improvements.
According to Android Headlines, the list of changes to the application is not long. However, there are several of them intended to improve the user's experience. In this latest version of the app released on desktop Thursday, Feb. 2, users will get an option to download article suggestion if they long press on the tab.
This new feature should make things quick and simple if you want to download and store an article for later. Such an option could be especially useful if you know you will want to access those pages while offline but you'll be in an area without internet at some point.
In addition to the option of long pressing in order to download article suggestion links, another new feature was just added in this release to the new tab. It is possible now to access downloads from the new tab page. Users won't need anymore to search around in their app to find the downloads page.
The "Touch to Search" option comes with a slight visual revamp that makes it possible for users to more quickly open the just launched search page as its own tab. You'll likely still have to open the downloads page if you want the full list to search through everything. In order to get the full list of your downloads, you can tap on the "more" button, on the new tab page. Luckily, there's still no need to search around in the overflow menu in order to get to them.
Various forms of information can be used now with a simple tap. For example, in case that you open up a web page and you see a phone number or an email address that you want to use for contact, you could use them by tapping on them. You are not limited anymore to just copying and pasting.
Chrome 56's Fixes And Performance Improvements
There are some fixes and performance improvements that are part of this update, as with every new release. They're intended to provide users of Chrome on Android a smoother experience while browsing the web. Among these optimizations is included faster rendering.
According to 9To5Google, Chrome has a received a number of tweaks designed to improve browsing performance. A new reload behavior allows that page refreshes are 28 percent faster with bandwidth savings and less power consumption.
Optimizations to the rendering pipeline allow now Chrome to skip redundant tasks by making smarter decisions. This performance improvement has reduced the time needed to paint a new frame by 35 percent. The browser has also become more intelligent about optimizing the workload for the hardware present on the machine where it's installed.
For complex content rendering, Chrome 56 has also become better at utilizing GPU acceleration. This allows performance improvements to scroll smoothness, input latency and animation. A new Web Bluetooth API was implemented in the update, in order to allow web apps on Chrome OS, Android, and Mac to communicate with nearby Bluetooth Low Energy devices.
