Google Chrome 59 For Android Arrives With Big Speed Boost

Google rolled out Chrome 59 for desktop platforms earlier this week, and now it’s time for Android to get the same treatment. While Chrome 59 for Android (59.0.3071.92) obviously doesn’t have the native desktop notification improvements found in the macOS version or Headless Chromium, it does bring changes that make your browsing experience even better.

The biggest change is that pages will now load even faster, while using less memory, thanks to a revamped JavaScript engine. Chrome’s penchant for devouring memory is well documented, so it’s good to see that Google is continually tackling these demons.

Over the past year, Google has improved the average page loads by 10 to 20 percent by tweaking the V8 JavaScript engine — those improvements continue with Chrome 59. JavaScript is a big part of what makes the cogs of the internet turn, and Google zeroed in on its V8 JavaScript engine to improve performance. Google also focused on popular websites like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia to measure performance instead of relying solely on benchmarks which often just measure peak performance.

While the speed improvements in Chrome 59 are greatly appreciated, Google is also working on further improvements to the browser. In the future, Google will introduce new script patterns, more modern libraries and new ES2015+ language features to further JavaScript performance.

Chrome 59 for Android also adds support for animated PNGs (APNGs), which offers functionality similar to that of animated GIFs, with the added benefit of 24-bit images and 8-bit transparency. APNGs has been in use in Firefox for years, and support joined the Apple universe last year with via iMessages in iOS 10.

According to Google, Chrome 59 for Android will begin appearing in the Play Store during the next week. Chrome 59 has already been released for iOS.

(Image Source: Flickr/Kārlis Dambrāns)