The makers of the Opera web browser have been offering optional data compression for almost a decade. Enable compression and Opera will use remote servers to shrink the file size of images and other online content before sending it to your browser in order to cut down on your bandwidth usage.

Now Opera is getting ready to launch an app that doesn’t just reduce data usage in your web browser. It’ll compress mobile data used by nearly all of your Android apps.

It’s called Opera Max, and there’s a free public beta version available for download from the Play Store.

Opera Max

Right now Opera is taking pre-registrations for the service. When you download and install the app on your phone or tablet it’ll tell you where you are on the waiting list.

Once you gain access to the service though, Opera says it can reduce up to 50 percent of your mobile data usage by compressing video, images, and text for most non-encrypted Android apps.

That means you’ll have to route your data through Opera’s servers — so if you have trust issues you might want to just try to keep your data usage down the old fashioned way: by using your phone over WiFi whenever possible.

But if you find yourself regularly bumping up against your phone company’s data caps, Opera Max could be a tool to keep an eye on. Once it comes out of beta, Opera will probably start charging a monthly fee for use. But it’ll likely be cheaper than upgrading your mobile data plan.

via Android Police

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3 replies on “Opera Max makes mobile data go further by compressing all your Android app data usage”

  1. Does anyone know of any VPN services that also provide compression? I know if you set up your own OpenVPN server, you can make use of LZO compression. Although, I don’t know if it’s compressing the encrypted data packets or the non-encrypted data. I assume it would compress the non-encypted data because encrypted data can’t be compressed much.

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