Google Chrome is known for gobbling up a phone or laptop's battery power when in use. Fortunately, Google is working on fixing this and recently introduced an update that will help lower power consumption.

The new Google Chrome 57 update (57.0.2987.98) will reduce the power consumption of background tabs. The company's engineers said that the new Chrome 57 update will temporarily interrupt a background tab's JavaScript timers if it's taking up more than one percent of the device's CPU core, according to Bleeping Computer.

On mobile devices, all background timers and operations will be halted automatically after five minutes. This action will consume less resource and reduce battery usage.

JavaScript timers are used by numerous websites that display real-time content (e.g. Facebook, Gmail, YouTube and Twitter). These sites continue to work and consume resources even when the user switches to a different tab. Limiting JavaScript timers will yield 25 percent "fewer busy background apps" in Chrome 57.

You can check out the complete list of the high and medium severity issues fixed by the latest Chrome 57 update here. The update didn't just include security fixes, though; it also delivers improved web content delivery.

The update comes with support for a new delivery system called WebAssembly to speed up web apps' loading process, Komando reported. WebAssembly does this by packing resources with fewer codes so even complicated apps such as 3D video gaming and media editing programs can run smoothly in Chrome.

Chrome for Android also introduces the revamped "Add to Home screen" functionality. With this, web apps can be placed on the phone or tablet's home screen or app drawer.

There's also the CSS Grid Layout support that arranges web content in grids that adapt to the device's screen size. Those using Chrome on Android devices will have the new Media Session API thanks to the update. The feature displays customized, eye-catching media notifications.

You can download the Chrome 57 update via Play Store. For computer users, click the three dots on the screen's upper right corner. Click Update Google Chrome and then Relaunch.

Chrome's popularity all over the world is the main reason why hackers flock to the browser. A new credit card scam (brought by the malware Betaling) has hit Chrome and it is fooling users into giving up their card details.

Once users enter their credit card information, the details will be emailed to the scammers' AOL email ID. The scam uses the standard Chrome icon, making it hard for you to differentiate which of them are fake and legit.

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