The core difference between two mobile browser versions is how Opera Turbo is handled in the browser. Opera Turbo is Opera’s compression service that reduces the size of web pages by sending the data through an Opera server where they are compressed before they are send to the user’s mobile device.

Smaller data packages means faster page loading times and a reduced bandwidth bill for users who pay by the Megabyte.

Opera Mini 6.5 is now available for new devices (The Android version has been out for a few weeks) including Apple iOS, Symbian, Blackberry and J2ME devices. The big new feature in Opera Mini 6.5 and Opera Mobile 11.5 is a new data counter that allows mobile users to keep tabs on their bandwidth usage. While that may not be exciting for users with flatrates, it may very well make a big difference for consumers who pay by the Megabyte (or capped data plans).

Other improvements include stability and performance fixes, better text selection and auto-correct and spell-check support for iOS devices. Interested users can read up on all the changes at the official Opera Mini blog post.

A blog post over at the Opera Mobile blog informs users about the changes in the release (please note that Opera Mobile 11.5 has been available for some time for Android based devices on the Android Market)

Opera Mobile 11.5 introduces the data usage view on Symbian devices. The new version benefits from an Opera Presto rendering engine upgrade as well.

Opera Mobile users on Symbian devices can access the changelog here. Symbian users can point their browsers to m.opera.com to download the latest version of the Opera Mobile or Opera Mini browser. Browsers may also be available in the Apple App Store and on Android Market.

In mobile browsing, even more so years ago, speed was essential. Imagine having to wait a minute or more for a website to download, which was not uncommon those days. Today broadband speeds are more common but there are still situations and places in the world where you do not get high speeds, where every Kilobyte counts so to say.

And that’s where Opera Turbo revolutionized the browsing. In its core, Opera Turbo is nothing more than a way to compress websites. Many users know that they can compress files to save space, which is also beneficial if those files need to be send by email or uploaded to the web.

The very same concept, albeit more sophisticated, is being utilized by Opera Turbo. Part of the traffic is redirected through Opera servers. The Opera server compresses elements of that website and sends them to the user’s browser. The benefit is a faster transfer of the website to the user’s system which in turn means that the website is displayed faster in the browser interface.

Lets take a look at the basics of Opera Turbo first:

Opera Turbo Basics

You activate and deactivate Opera Turbo with a click on the Turbo icon in the Opera status bar. The compression technology is disabled by default, and needs to be enabled before it becomes active in the web browser. The icon turns green when it is activated so that it is easy to identify the different modes on first glance.

With Opera Turbo on, all websites that use the http protocol are redirected through the Opera Turbo servers where they are compressed before send to the user computer. HTTPS connections, for instance on financial sites or sites like Facebook or Twitter are not compressed by Opera Turbo.

You can disable Opera Turbo at anytime with another click on the Turbo icon.

Now that we have established what gets compressed, we should take a look at the benefits in detail.

Opera Turbo Benefits

The old version of Opera Turbo back in 2009 managed to reduce the size of the page download by 25% to 75% depending on the site in question. A 1000 Kilobyte site like Wired for instance was reduced to 550 Kilobytes which in turn meant that the web site loaded in about half the time it would have without Opera Turbo.

With the old Opera Turbo, users got a 25% to 75% speed increase over standard connections to websites. Opera recently introduced the new Opera Turbo. The main improvements are a switch from the JPEG format for images to WebP and improved network connections. Take a look at how this reduced the overall transferred data on the following sites (courtesy of Audun Mathias Øygard)

As you can see, the switch to WebP and the additional improvements have reduced the file size by another 22%. Even better, the image quality has actually improved thanks to the format switch.

But those tests have been performed by Opera, how about some of our own?

• ghacks.net: 600 Kilobytes saved, 2.5x compression
• lifehacker.com: 1 Megabyte saved, 4.1x compression
• msn.com: 375 Kilobytes saved, 3.3x compression
• makeuseof.com: 1 Megabyte saved, 2.6x compression
• loginhelper.com: 240 Kilobytes saved, 2.3x compression
• windows7news.com: 837 Kilobytes saved, 3.5x compression
• windows8news.com: 820 Kilobytes saved, 3.4x compression
• gardenpatioset.com: 144 Kilobytes saved, 3.1x compression

You save a lot with Opera Turbo, especially on sites with lots of images that are not overly optimized. The only sites where you won’t save as much as multimedia sites, for instance Youtube as the videos are not compressed.

Still, if you are short on bandwidth you will notice a huge speed increase by enabling Opera Turbo.

Opera Turbo Videos

Criticism

There is not really a lot that you can criticize. Probably the two main points are that image quality may be noticeably worse in some occasions and that the traffic is redirected through the Opera server.

It should be clear that the quality of images gets reduced if they are compressed by Opera Turbo. That’s one of the downsides of the feature. There does not seem to be an option to load individual images without compression if Opera Turbo is enabled. The only option for now is to disable Opera Turbo if you want to see the images in their original quality.

Privacy on the other hand is a completely different beast. It basically boils down to this: If you do not like it do not use it. There is not really anything that you can do about the fact that Opera Turbo requires that the traffic is routed through Opera as this is the only way to compress the data before it gets send to your computer.

Lastly, it needs to be noted that websites will see a different IP address when Opera Turbo is active. While that actually improves privacy for some users, it can also mean that you may see contents, for instance advertisement, optimized for a different country in the web browser.

Verdict

Internet users who are on dial-up connections, slow networks or on a limited high-paying bandwidth plan benefit the most from Opera Turbo. The ability to turn the feature on or off with a switch should be enough to convince users to give it a try, considering the speed gains and bandwidth reductions that can be achieved with Opera Turbo.

Interested users can download the latest version of the Opera web browser from Opera.com. And yes, all Opera browsers come with Opera Turbo by default.

This concludes the first part of our Discovering Opera series. Stay tuned for more.

Manual installation was a breeze. Users should check the Options during installation as it allows them to install a portable copy of Opera if they like.

The What’s New in Opera 11.10 page is automatically loaded after upgrade or manual installation. Among the new features is an improved version of Speed Dial which the company calls Speed Dial 2.0. They have basically done away with most of the restrictions of the former Speed Dial. You can for instance add an unlimited number of websites to the Speed Dial page, and the previews are dynamically updated to reflect website changes.

Opera 11.10 will also make it easier to install missing browser plugins. For now, it is only Adobe Flash Player that is supported but more will surely follow in later releases. If you do not have Flash installed in Opera you get a prompt when you visit a site that requires Flash. Installation is seamless and automatic with barely any user interaction.

Improvements have been made to Opera Turbo, Opera’s own compression engine that compresses requested on an Opera server before they are send to the user. This can greatly reduce the period it takes to download and display the full web page on the user’s screen.

Web Developers will notice that Opera has added support for new CSS3 elements like linear gradients and multiple columns. The HTML5test reflects this with a slightly better score of 265 out of 400 points (the beta was at 251 points, Opera 11.01 at 241 points).

Opera Speed Dial Video

Opera Turbo Video

Interested users find the latest Opera 11.10 downloads over at the Opera website. You can also take a look at the changelog for in depths information on all changes in this new release.

In other news; Opera is now offering a web email service that’s free for anyone to use. It is called My Opera Mail.

Opera users who have already been working with beta versions of the release will not find many (if any) changes to previous builds in this final versions. That’s however different for Opera users who have been waiting for the final version release before making the switch.

Opera 10.10 has Opera Unite build in. Opera Unite is probably the biggest change to previous Opera versions as it makes it possible to use the Opera web browser as a web server to use it for things like file sharing, photo hosting, media streaming, file synchronization or chatting. More than 30 applications for Opera Unite are already available and Opera is getting the community involved by running a competition for the best Opera Unite application where developers can win prices.

Opera 10.10 does make use of Opera Turbo as well, a compression based data transfer option to retrieve websites faster which works quite well for users with slow Internet connection. Opera 10.10 final can be downloaded from the main Opera website where it is available for download for all supported operating systems.

The changelog of this new version lists several bug fixes in the interface, core, Opera Mail, Opera Unite and some more that are operating system specific. The full changelog is available at the blog post announcing this lucky Friday the 13th edition.

The release candidate comes with Opera Link, Opera Unite and Opera Turbo. All of these features can be activated in the left corner of the status bar of the Opera browser. Opera Link can be used to synchronized bookmarks, notes, speed dial settings and other information. Opera Unite to use the web browser as a web server and Opera Turbo to speed up page loading and connection by using compression.

All available versions can be downloaded from the Opera website. Watch out for Jason, though..

Privacy advocates have already expressed great concern as proxy servers are not only in use by individuals who want to protect their privacy but also by companies and even Internet Service Providers, sometimes without the knowledge of the end user. VPN (Virtual Private Network) would for example be classified as proxy servers under the new legislation. As is the popular Tor client that has been created specifically to counter censorship in the world. Several web browsers like Opera Mini or Opera 10 are also making use of proxy servers to compress data to decrease the time it takes to load websites.

The United States Sentencing Commission will vote on the new legislation on April 15. It is set to take effect on November 1 if is is passing the voting process. You can read up on the EFFs stance here

Opera Turbo has been added to the mobile web browser which is a compression technique that is routing Internet traffic through a server that is compressing the contents so that they can be delivered more rapidly to the user. The monthly bandwidth bill will also benefit from Opera Turbo as compressed data reduces the overall bandwidth consumption of the mobile device.

Other improvements in Opera Mobile 9.7 are the improved widget manager which runs independently from the web browser, Google Gears support and hardware acceleration with OpenGL ES support. Opera Mobile 9.7 Beta has not yet been released but it is expected to be released soon. Opera created a speed comparison video between Opera Mobile 9.7 with Opera Turbo enabled, Opera Mobile 9.7 without Opera Turbo and Microsoft IE Mobile.

The loading times differ widely. Opera Turbo speeds up the page loading time of that specific page by more than 20 seconds when compared to Opera Mobile 9.7 without Opera Turbo and an amazing 3 minutes 7 seconds in comparison to Internet Explorer Mobile.

Opera Turbo has been designed for computer systems with limited bandwith. Users with fast connections will see no huge differences in the speed that the websites are displayed but will notice a traffic reduction thanks to the compression. Users with limited bandwidth on the other hand will notice both a website loading improvement and traffic reductions.

The layouts of websites that are accessed with Opera Turbo will look exactly like they did before. The major difference is that image resolutions may appear lower which can be attributed to the compression. Please note that text and other elements are also compressed.

Encrypted traffic will not be routed through the Opera compression servers. This means that accessing your bank’s website, PayPal or any other website that is using the SSL protocol will make use of direct connections.

Please note that Opera 10 with Turbo is still in alpha stage. Opera Turbo will display an icon in the Opera status bar that is giving the user indications whether it is enabled or disabled. It will also display the average compression ratio as an icon and the saved Megabytes when hovering over the Opera Turbo status bar icon.

Opera Turbo builds up on the experience that the Opera development team gathered during the development of Opera Mini. The new service will be officially announced at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. The information that can be gathered from the available whitepaper suggests a broader service that allows businesses to run Opera Turbo servers which will manage the compression for their clients. Internet traffic will be routed through Opera Turbo servers which compress it and send it to the clients. The browsers on the client side will also compress any data before it is send to the Opera Turbo server which unpacks it before it is send to the actual destination.

According to the whitepaper Opera Turbo will be able to compress network traffic by up to 80%. The benefits of Opera Turbo should be obvious. The service will save businesses bandwidth, speed up web surfing for clients and reduce costs thanks to the reduced bandwidth requirements. The main Achilles’ heel of Opera Turbo is the requirement to use Opera software to make use of the technique. Opera currently has a web browser market share of about 1% which means that about 99% of all Internet users will probably never be able to test Opera Turbo. Existing Opera users on the other hand might be able to benefit from Opera Turbo as Opera has the intention to utilize the technique into the Opera web browser and Opera mobile browser.