We already have that. (See attached screenshot, this is on Chrome Dev)

Patrick, can you clarify?

Deleted: device-2016-04-20-100653.png 730 KB

	device-2016-04-20-100653.png 730 KB View Download

Never mind, figured out it's a localization issue. en-UK gives 12 hours ago while en-US gives 12 hr. ago

We have discovered that this could be a localisation issue. May's phone is set to UK English and give '6 hours ago', while mine is set to US English and gives '6 hr. ago'. Was this what you were talking about?

Deleted: 2016-04-20_11-08-28.png 321 KB

	2016-04-20_11-08-28.png 321 KB View Download

I think then the I18N issue is UK English ;)

Rachel's mocks contained the abbreviated version (which then made it into the US original string I guess), but we want to have the long version in all EN (and other languages), so:

hours/days ago, not hr.

For some reason it's not stable across OS versions and Locales. on N6/M it says "x hr. ago" and on N5/KK is says "x hours ago", both en_GB.

An argument in favour of the short strings: It might be better when we have the publisher name in, as it's on the same line in the mocks. Abbreviated strings will look better on small screens.

That's weird, how can this be different across OS versions? Don't we (Chrome) own this string?

+1 for "long" strings ("hours"). The "hr." abbreviation bugs me.

Right now, we get the string from an Android API that could have changed.

No, we use a method from the android framework to format it: DateUtils.getRelativeTimeSpanString(..., DateUtils.FORMAT_ABBREV_RELATIVE)); 

That means that the format should be coherent across all apps that use the same format type on a given device. I can use the long format, but that was just to say that it may be a feature. I'll try to see where the change comes from.

I didn't find much, we delegate to icu4j, and I don't seem to see device or screen size specific code. It might be just related to library version differences. Anyway, I'm sending a CL to stop abbreviating.

The following revision refers to this bug:
  https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/d0cae4edf5e0f84bf704d18ff9d634d2140c0b8b

commit d0cae4edf5e0f84bf704d18ff9d634d2140c0b8b
Author: dgn <dgn@chromium.org>
Date: Fri Apr 22 12:26:06 2016

[NTP Snippets] Express the snippet age with a non abbreviated string

Avoid using "1 hr. ago" or "3 mins ago" for example, and just uses
a long string.

BUG= 604810 

Review URL: https://codereview.chromium.org/1911243003

Cr-Commit-Position: refs/heads/master@{#389083}

[modify] https://crrev.com/d0cae4edf5e0f84bf704d18ff9d634d2140c0b8b/chrome/android/java/src/org/chromium/chrome/browser/ntp/snippets/SnippetArticleViewHolder.java

Accidentally regressed by crbug/596410. Fix up shortly.

The following revision refers to this bug:
  https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/b9389d58add9c11a2b01db064d56f870db825d7d

commit b9389d58add9c11a2b01db064d56f870db825d7d
Author: maybelle <maybelle@chromium.org>
Date: Wed May 04 14:50:13 2016

Change snippets published date to long string

Regressed during a bad merge with the fix for 596410

BUG= 604810 

Review-Url: https://codereview.chromium.org/1949073002
Cr-Commit-Position: refs/heads/master@{#391507}

[modify] https://crrev.com/b9389d58add9c11a2b01db064d56f870db825d7d/chrome/android/java/src/org/chromium/chrome/browser/ntp/snippets/SnippetArticleViewHolder.java