Opera today announced that its Opera Max data-management app is now integrated into phones from 14 OEMs. These include previously announced partners like Samsung and Xiaomi, as well as three newly announced partners: Acer, Hisense and TWZ. Thanks to these partnerships, Opera now believes its Max software will be on more than 100 million Android phones by 2017.
Opera Max essentially works as a proxy server that intercepts all the traffic from your phone (except for encrypted connections) and then routes it through Opera’s servers, which apply a number of bandwidth-saving techniques to the traffic. That includes compressing images and videos, as well as optimizing basic HTML and CSS.
If you have an unlimited data plan or subscribe to more data than you usually use in a month, Opera Max is probably not for you. If you’re on a metered plan, though, chances are the service can save you a bit of money here and there. Opera says its service can bring down data consumption by as much as 50 percent. For users who spend a lot of time in apps like Instagram, YouTube and Netflix, savings can add up to 60 percent.
“Many users are wary of using mobile data for fear of spending too much or exceeding their data caps. We see OEMs responding to this and stepping up to lower the barrier to mobile internet access by providing a data-optimization solution on their devices,” Sergey Lossev, Opera’s product manager for Opera Max, says in today’s announcement.
Opera Max now comes pre-loaded on phones from Acer, Cherry Mobile, Evercoss, Fly, Hisense, Mobiistar, Micromax, Oppo, Prestigio, Samsung, Symphony, TWZ, Tecno, and Xiaomi.