Issue 62833002 on Chromium code talks about a “low-end” mode for Chrome on Android. There is already a low-end mode but that is not something users can enable. Chrome detects specific low-end hardware combinations and activates this mode. But this bug report talk about making this feature available as an option for everyone.

Here is the full description:

The current low-end device optimizations are restricted to devices that meet certain memory and OS version criteria. Add a flag that overrides this detection, simplifying testing and allowing power users to take advantage of the optimizations.

KitKat has kicked off a drive to make Android and Google apps perform better on low-end hardware. This is Chrome team’s contribution. We already saw a tab switching experiment, and this may be a few more steps towards the same direction.

This feature is still being discussed/developed. We will have to wait for few more weeks to see if it makes to the beta version of Chrome for Android.

On a side note, I try not to use Chrome on Android. I am not happy with the performance. Are you?