Opera Mini for Android 10.0.1884.93721

Overview

Opera Mini for Android is a lightweight web browser for use on mobile devices like Android smart phones and tablets.

The Opera browsing experience is one of elegant simplicity. There are few add ons that can extend the use of the browser here, but what the developers were going for was pure speed. This is a good thing because more and more budget Android smart phones and tablets are hitting the market everyday with lackluster specifications that cannot handle robust web browsers that well.

Fast searching is enabled with an "up" swipe to get right into the search feature. Find what you want much faster.

Installation

The installation of Opera Mini is simple to do. It can be downloaded from the Google Play store.

There were no malicious software included with the Opera Mini app.

Opera Mini for Android requires Android 2.3 or later.

Interface

The interface of Opera Mini browser is all about minimal design over enhanced web browsing experience. The software is intended to be lightweight and ideal for mobile computing where powerful chips are in short supply.

The design is different depending whether the browser is being access on an Android smart phone or tablet. There are also several layout styles to choose from as well.

With one smart phone layout, the navigation bar is at the top, but the forward button, back button, dial, open tabs navigator and main Opera settings logo sit at the bottom. This will be different to what most users are comfortable with and may be a reason to not use Opera Mini on their Droid smart phone. However, this can be changed to a different layout on the phone which positions everything at the top but creates a smaller navigation bar as a result. Take your pick.

With the tablet layout, all navigational elements are included at the top adjacent to the navigation bar, but again this can be altered to suit the user's preferences.

Pros

• Lightweight web browser
• Loads pages faster
• Uses fewer resources and memory than some other web browsers
• Both forward and back button access
• Large button bookmarks
• Browser layout styles
• Dial with favorite web sites and thumbnails shown

Cons

• Not as many add ons as are available with Firefox or Chrome for Android.

Alternatives

Firefox for Android is one good alternative when wanting to avoid using Chrome and not taking to Opera or Opera Mini. There are a good number of add ons already available for the Android version of Firefox which can handle over 50 open tabs even on low-powered devices.

Conclusion

Opera Mini for Android is useful alternative, lightweight web browser for use on budget-end Android models. The browser offers many of the usual features that big boy web browsers like Firefox does, but cuts out a lot of the fluff too.