12 April 2013

Reduce Data Usage in Chrome for Android



The latest release of Chrome Beta for Android added an interface for the data compression proxy. You no longer have to enable a flag, just open Chrome's menu, go to the settings, select "Bandwidth management", "Reduce data usage" and enable the feature.






You can start visiting your favorite sites and check back the "Bandwidth management" to see some stats. For more detailed stats, type chrome://net-internals in the omnibox and select the "Bandwidth" section in the left sidebar.






My total savings percentage is 33.5%, so the compression rate is 100%-33.5%=66.5%. Some people complained that it's too low compared to Opera Mini's 90% compression rate, but Opera Mini is not a browser. It's just a thin client app and all the rendering and JavaScript processing is performed on Opera's servers, so Opera Mini only needs a simplified OBML file. You should compare Chrome's data compression proxy to Opera Turbo, a feature available in the Opera Mobile browser. "In November 2009, the average compression rate for Opera Turbo was 63.6%," according to an Opera report [PDF], while in February 2010 the average compression rate was 59%. It's worth pointing out that Opera shows the compression rate (highpercentage%), not the savings percentage (100% -highpercentage%=lowpercentage%).


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