Opera has just released a new version of its Android browser which comes with an improved reader-mode, plus a wealth of other nifty upgrades.
Switching on the new reader feature will change scribbly, hard-to-see fonts into eyeball friendly styles. It will also temporarily hide the navigation bar at the top of the screen, transforming the page into a newspaper-like layout.
As with all Opera browsers, the Android version has some buffed privacy and security measures – it comes with built-in tracker-blockers and free VPN. These tasty little extras mean that companies who like to harvest your data should find it a lot more difficult to do so.
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But it looks like the Vivaldi developers are hot on the heels of Opera in the Android updates race.
As background: one of Opera’s founders decided to quit the company in 2011, believing that investors had taken the company in the wrong direction. Since then, Jon von Tetzchner has been hard at work on a new browser, Vivaldi.
When we spoke with him recently, Teztchner confirmed that “the mobile release isn’t finished, but it will be shortly.” The beta version of Vivaldi is already available, but Teztchner says that “the company has decided to give it more time to add more features – there’s more stuff coming.”
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Vivaldi has a lot of features and it’s similarly keen on privacy issues. “We don’t gather any information about what the users are doing at all. We don’t have a system to make money off data,” says Teztchner.
So which is better? Well you can compare the two for free. The new version of Opera is released today, and Android users can also download the beta version of Vivaldi from Google Play.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
