UC Browser v12.0 announced: Watch videos while downloading and more

UCWeb, which is backed by Chinese giant Alibaba, on Wednesday took the wraps off the new version of the popular UC Browser that will reduce the lags and data consumption on online-streamed videos at an event held in New Delhi. The UC Browser v12.0 now comes with a new tagline – “Content for everyone, Every Content for One” – and brings improved features such as multitasking, low RAM consumption, watching video while downloading, and video previews among others. Alongside, UCWeb also announced that UC Browser has now crossed 130 million active monthly users in India, while the total number of users in India is estimated around 450 million in India. The UC Browser v12.0 is now available to download from Google Play store.
The latest UC Browser v12.0 primarily focuses on the video consumption as the company believes that video is the most popular category among all the contents offered in the browser ecosystem. As part of the new update, the videos will now stream with ‘zero lag’, simultaneously saving up to 50 percent data while utilising the VP9 codec. Additionally, the videos can be watched while downloading along with video previews to figure out if a viewer wants to continue watching a particular video beforehand. The interface of the browser has also been tweaked to bring a widget on top of the browser that can be customised to add ‘Smart Weather’ or Smart Zodiac Signs’ feature.

In addition, the UC Browser v12.0 now supports multitasking where a video can be minimised inside the browser to create room for other activities such as news reading, accessing websites. The video being played essentially goes into the Picture-in-Picture (PiP) mode without exerting much pressure on the smartphone’s processor, says the company. The UC Browser is upgraded to run on the U4 Kernel core that allows faster page loads, even on the smartphones with as low as 1GB of RAM size. Apart from this, the new version addresses the Spectre vulnerability and comes with preloaded mitigations.

Commenting on the launch of UC Browser v12, Shallia Li, Head of UC Browser (International Business Department) at Alibaba Mobile Business Group said, “UCWeb has always been dedicated in making content easily accessible for users, even when they are in limited bandwidth area. With evolving user demands, we are also upgrading our technology. Our data compression technology now provides a ‘No buffering’ video watching experience.”