Opera Mobile and Mini Browsers for Android Help You Track Data Downloads

October 11th, 2011 by Kenneth Butler, LAPTOP Web Producer/Writer

Android fans, tracking your data usage just got a whole lot easier. New versions of the Opera Mobile and Mini web browsers now include a special feature that allows users to track the amount of data they’ve downloaded.

The tool is geared toward mobile device users who purchase capped monthly data service. Using either the Opera Mobile 11.5 or Opera Mini 6.5 web browsing apps, those users can launch a tool that displays how much data they’ve eaten in their 30-day diet. The feature gives Android fans a handy new way to track their data consumption and avoid any overage fees. Check out more thoughts below.

We updated a version of Opera Mobile running on an HTC EVO 4G and tested the new feature. True to claims, Opera Mobile reflected the amount of data we downloaded in the browser. To test the new tool, we browsed a few blog posts saturated with large JPEG images. When we finished, the amount of data received climbed from 0MB to 9.5MB.

In addition to the data tracking feature, Opera Mini includes an improved Presto rendering engine for processing web data in the cloud and displaying pages faster, similar to the Silk web browser found on the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet. Likewise, Opera Mobile includes Turbo Mode, a setting that enables Mini-like Presto-based web surfing. Both versions can automatically import your bookmarks from the Android device and support links to your favorite websites from the homescreen.

Other new features include inline video support on devices running Android Honeycomb and small improvements to HTML5 and JavaScript management.

Both Opera Mobile 11.5 and Opera Mini 6.5 are available in the Android Market.