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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Five Opera Mini features that make it a better browser than rivals
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Five Opera Mini features that make it a better browser than rivals

Chrome and Firefox are more popular, but when it comes to features Opera Mini has an upperhand

While Google Chrome offers plenty of handy features such as the data saver mode, text scaling and safe browsing, it has a lot of catching-up to do with some of its rivals such as the Opera Mini. Premium
While Google Chrome offers plenty of handy features such as the data saver mode, text scaling and safe browsing, it has a lot of catching-up to do with some of its rivals such as the Opera Mini.

Despite the availability of an app for practically anything these days, a lot of users rely on mobile browsers for the sheer flexibility they offer. One can look up anything, access any social media network and even stream videos on a mobile browser. While Google Chrome offers plenty of handy features such as the data saver mode, text scaling and safe browsing, it has a lot of catching-up to do with some of its rivals such as the Opera Mini. We take a look at some of the key highlights of Opera Mini.

Keeps advertisements away

Mobile advertisements can be very frustrating at times. They slow down web pages, redirect users to other pages and if there is a video involved, they waste mobile data without the user’s knowledge. Opera Mini is the only mobile browser which has a built in ad blocker. It is very effective and can block all banner or video ads on any webpage from showing on the browser. To activate this feature, go to the Opera icon at the lower right hand side of the home page and select ad blocking in the small pop-up window it opens.

Allows video download

A recent addition, video downloading allows users to download videos uploaded on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter or other webpages in MP4 file formats. This feature doesn’t work with YouTube, though. To access this feature, user needs to play the video and a download window will automatically pop up. With this, users can save videos on WiFi and view them offline afterwards.

Reduces stress on eyes

Internet browsing or scanning through social media posts on smartphones at night has multiple health-related concerns. Several studies have pointed out that the blue light from smartphones not only affects eyes, but also disrupts sleep and can lead to obesity, cardiovascular diseases and metabolic disruption. Opera Mini has this unique night mode which blocks the blue light by switching on a more soothing pink coloured screen instead of the sharp looking white. It is accessible in settings in same pop-up window which shows after tapping on the Opera icon. Go to settings and select night mode in the next page.

Stream videos faster

Video boost is another video-related tool in opera Mini, which reduces buffering time for videos by reducing the size of the video data. This feature allows users to stream video on any online streaming site such as Netflix or YouTube with zero lags. To access it, user needs to enable the video boost feature in the phone’s settings-> data saver mode->video boost.

Data saver mode

Long before Google added the data saver mode on its mobile browser, Opera Mini was using the same technology to compress and convert a web page and its contents into format which uses less bandwidth and open a lot faster. The extreme data saver mode is an improved version of it, which can save up to 90% of mobile data. It also shows the amount of data it saves on a red banner on the menu page. To access it, go to menu->tap on the red banner-> enable extreme mode. This is slightly better than the data saver mode on Chrome browser and opens web pages on slow networks faster.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abhijit Ahaskar
Abhijit writes on tech policy, gaming, security, AI, robotics, electronics and startups. He has been in the media industry for over 12 years.
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Published: 27 Jul 2016, 12:35 PM IST
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