Saving your mobile data with Opera Max

In case you didn’t know, Opera Max is now available for use in Singapore. Opera Max claims to do the following:

Opera Max is a data-savings app that shrinks videos and photos on almost any app on your phone. Extend your data plan up to 50% for free.

In my experience, it’s more like saving 10%. But it varies drastically depending on your surfing habits. For me, the app that it saves the most data in is 9gag (graphic intensive and saving around 30%), and normal browsing (18%) But hey, most Singaporeans are on a very small data plan quota, so every bit helps i guess.

Opera Max works by using a VPN connection to their server, where they will try to compress the data before sending it to your phone, without affecting quality too much. Thus it works best on photos and videos. It also means you can’t use a VPN connection while using Opera Max at the same time. Connection speed wasn’t affected significantly, thank fully. But I found it irritating to have Opera Max constantly with a notification on your status bar. Didn’t see any other negatives in using the app otherwise. For those worried about security, only non-encrypted data is rerouted. Content over a HTTPS connection would still be direct to the original server.

Opera Max is available as a free download on Google Play for smartphones running Android 4.0 or above.

If it is primarily browsing data that you want to compress and you use Chrome, you can enable a similar feature as well. There’s no need for Opera. Head over to settings and turn on “Reduce Data Usage”.