discuss enabling TabbedPaintPreview only on lower end devices

[kjozwiak]

Description

With C105, you'll notice Preview being displayed within the omnibox before the page finishes loading and then displays a modal/notification that says Viewing live page. What happens is that it loads an image in the view while the libraries are being loaded before letting the user know that they're viewing a live page.

@samartnik mentioned that this feature has been around for a while but is probably now appearing as it takes a bit longer for libraries to load on startup on C105, hence the Preview before loading the page. This feature is mostly tailored for lower end devices.

So we'll need to decide if we want to keep it as is for now or just enable it for lower end devices. However, if we do disable this for higher end devices and only enable it for lower device, someone with a higher end device could see a blank page while the libraries are loading rather than an Preview image.

Steps to reproduce

1. open/launch any version of Brave that has C105
2. open any website and leave it as the active tab
3. close/re-launch Brave a few times until you see the Preview via the omnibox
4. after a few ms, you'll notice a Viewing life page modal/notification in the middle of the viewport indicating the website loaded

Actual result

• Example of the Preview feature happening on mobile: -> https://youtube.com/shorts/zdoT8G0IteQ
• Example of the Preview feature happening on tablet: -> https://youtube.com/shorts/gBS_scxnJuk

Expected result

TBD and needs to be discussed/decided by product re: what we're going to do.

Issue reproduces how often

100% reproducible using the STR/Cases outlined above.

Version/Channel Information:

• Can you reproduce this issue with the current Play Store version? Yes
• Can you reproduce this issue with the current Play Store Beta version? Yes
• Can you reproduce this issue with the current Play Store Nightly version? Yes

Device details

• Install type (ARM, x86): ARM
• Device type (Phone, Tablet, Phablet): Samsung S10+ (Phone)
• Android version: Android 12

Brave version

Brave | 1.43.87 Chromium: 105.0.5195.68 (Official Build) (32-bit)
--- | ---
Revision | ad13e82529051bac6a0e65f455e6d7a1e5fd7938-refs/branch-heads/5195@{#903}
OS | Android 12; Build/SP1A.210812.016

Website problems only

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields? N/A
• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Rewards? N/A
• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome? Yes

Additional information

CCing @timchilds @anthonypkeane @srirambv @samartnik @Uni-verse

[deeppandya]

@timchilds we need to create security review for this.

[timchilds]

Security review: https://github.com/brave/security/issues/1021

[timchilds]

@deeppandya security review is complete. Adding this back to the triage for next week. To decide on whether we enable it for lower end devices vs. all devices.

[axaxs]

Just commenting to say, I have a higher end device(8gb ram, sd888) and see the same behavior as in the YouTube videos. It's highly jarring and annoying, and would vote to remove this behavior.

[timchilds]

Reopening to discuss during triage. Looks like some users don't like the preview feature.
https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/ym5tr5/does_anyone_know_how_i_disable_this_preview_thing/

@deeppandya @Sam-Sibley perhaps we add a toggle option under settings -> appearance. Or maybe we just disable it by default for all devices.

[Uni-verse]

Verified on Samsung Galaxy S21 using version:

Brave	1.47.167 Chromium: 109.0.5414.80 (Official Build) (64-bit) 
Revision	0f69b168d36a06cace4365e9f029fa987afa5633-refs/branch-heads/5414@{#1178}
OS	Android 12; Build/SP1A.210812.016

• Confirmed tab preview is disabled by default on upgraded profile.
• Confirmed tab preview is disabled when reloading tab/relaunching browser for new users

1.46.x	1.47.x

[shellscape]

A year later and this is still a problem in Brave 1.61.120, Chromium 120.0.6099.234