Opera for Android undergoes makeover, has better news feed, ad blocker

Android users will now see a more beautiful and streamlined interface as they browse on Opera’s browser for mobile.

Opera released a new version of the browser for Android on Thursday. The new browser also brings a slew of enhancements and features that users have been requesting from the past versions.

Besides a sleek new look, Opera for Android has a smart news feed, an integrated ad blocker that will aid in loading faster pages, and a video compression feature to enjoy more videos on your mobile device while using less data.

“We’ve given Opera for Android a serious lick of paint: the browser has a new look that’s fresh, modern, and inspired by Android’s material design,” said Andreas Bovens, the Opera for Android Product Manager.

The new design on Start Page has a Speed Dial on the left of the carousel and news feed on the right. Users can scroll through the channels across the top to see favorite topics, and tap the + icon on the right to configure favorite topics. The news feed also comes with a reader mode that can be configured in Settings.

Simplifying the menu, the ‘person’ icon on the bottom-right corner will provide an overview of offline pages, bookmarks, history and downloads. Signing in there, users can sync Speed Dial, bookmarks, tabs and typed history across devices.

Besides data saving options like ad blocker and video compression, users can also find a lot of advanced start page configuration options.

Here is what to expect in the next update. Opera is working on bringing in options to switch between tablet and normal layouts, change the news feed language and select download folder of choice, among other things.

You can download the latest Opera for Android at Google Play store.

COMMENTS