Android 15 could improve your web browsing

Google released the first Developer Preview a few days ago Android 15and enthusiasts from all over the world rushed to install it to discover the novelty that await us between now and the official release (if you are interested, here you will find our guide on how to install it and here the news of the latest version of the robot).

One of the features that have emerged in recent hours is quite interesting, and concerns a change that could improve our experience web browsing.

To carry out the rendering of the contents of the pages WebAndroid uses a tool called Android System WebViewwhich numerous apps use to show a login screen, a help page, or just their own contents, as happens with RSS readers as it allows you to avoid opening the default browser in a new tab.

Android System WebView it is based on the open source code of Chromium, the same as Chrome so to speak, but it is a separate package that is updated independently of Google’s browser.

To reduce space, however, with Android 10 Google has created a library called trichrome which contains code and resources shared by both packages.

Analyzing the first Developer Preview of Android 15the boys of Android Police they discovered that this very library was “pinned”, which we could translate as pinned, in your phone’s RAM in Android 15.

In practice, Android phones manage their RAM so as to allocate it when necessary, but some processes must always be available and not terminated, as otherwise there could be problems. Android has a system service called PinnerService which allows the framework to lock some files in the page cache, in order to free up the memory needed by any other process.

Basically the system note in memory some processes to ensure that they are eliminated when a large application is opened, a solution that is adopted for the app Google CameraThe Pixel Launcher and some major components of the operating system.

Now, too WebViewor rather the library trichrome, is added to this app list. It should be noted, however, that although the library’s apk file has a size of approximately 161 MB, in reality the operating system only notes 20MB, which also happens for other apps such as the aforementioned Google Camera and Pixel Launcher.

But what does this mean in practice? For the end user, the appointment of the library trichrome in PinnerService should result in faster loading speed of WebView, at least on devices with more RAM. In those with less memory available, however, the effect should be less evident.

Google probably made this choice because phones now have a lot RAM available, which can be used to improve the browsing experience. Nonetheless, we must keep in mind that we are only at the first stage Developer Preview of Android 15, so it is possible that things will change between now and release they change, without considering that we are looking at the i version here Pixels and some manufacturers may choose to change the flag to false and then decouple WebView from memory.