Opera Mini for Google Android recently updated Opera Mini to include News Discovery to easily find news articles by topic like Technology, or top stories. You can disable the News Discovery feature in the Advance settings in Opera Mini settings if you don’t need the News feature. It also updated its user interface to look more modern, and similar to the Opera for Google Android web browser.
I am currently using Opera Mini as my main web browser to save some bandwidth on my non-limited internet plan by compressing images and text in extreme mode. There is also a video boost feature in Opera Mini which make video play faster, and save some data. What I like about Opera Mini is that it does not require me to install a VPN or Proxy to save data. I just need to install it, and choose my quality setting for images in the data saving section of Opera settings for maximum data savings. I usually set image quality to low unless I want to see a higher quality version of the image on a website.
Opera Mini may not offer as much data saving as Opera Max which aleo compresses images and videos from other apps like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Other web browsers, etc. But, Opera Mini does not require an always-on VPN connection to Opera Max, so you can still use your own VPN or Proxy connection from work, school, or home, and use Opera Mini at the same time. Plus, sometimes it is faster to have a direct connection to the internet instead of using a VPN which may slowdown multi-player gaming, video downloads, and other online activities.
I think Opera Mini is a nice web browser for saving data without installing many third-party apps and changing settings like more advance apps like Opera Max. But, Opera Mini still being able to use a web browser with most of the features which users want like online video playback on a website, tabs, bookmarks, JavaScript support, etc.
Opera mini now can play videos directly on YouTube, and other sites when you switch to the High Saving mode instead of the Extreme mode. Most modern sites like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are displayed correctly and can play video on the site instead of launching the YouTube app like older versions of Opera Mini. I still manage to save over 30% of my bandwidth when using the High saving mode.
Opera Mini has a Phone and Classic theme which may work better on older smartphones and tablets with physical back, menu and home buttons on the bottom of the device, and lower resolution and smaller sized touchscreens. There are also now touch swipe gestures to save time, and make using Opera Mini simpler with one finger. Swipe bookmarks to remove, swipe downloads to abandon, Swipe up or long press to search, swipe down from top of browser to refresh, and swipe tabs to close tab. Categorize favorites into folders by dragging and dropping two favorites together.
Opera Mini has most of the standard features like tabs, incognito private browsing mode, speed dial bookmarks, regular bookmarks, bookmark folders in speed dial and bookmark folder, URL Link Search auto suggest while you type, multi-file downloads manager, auto-resume downloads, multiple file downloads at once, online video support, custom address bar search engines like : (Google, Yahoo, eBay, Imdb, Wikipedia, and Amazon), bookmarks syncing between devices like tablets, smartphones, and desktops, and social networking link sharing. [continue reading…]
