In the early days of access to the Internet on mobile devices, before Firefox or Chrome became household brands on smartphones, Opera
made a name for itself by providing the technology and the service to
compress data that goes through its browser. Now the company wants to
bring that concept outside the browser and into your entire Android
device.
Opera accomplishes this by employing an already known technology
called Virtual Private Network or VPN. In essence, this acts like a
tunnel through which data requests and replies go through from and to
the smartphone. With Opera Max, Internet data requests are coursed
through Opera’s servers that then compress the data into a more
optimized size. The amount of data space saved depends on the kind of
application and the connection used. For example, Opera Max doesn’t work
on data transferred by encrypted protocols like HTTPS, leaving out apps
such as Facebook out in the cold.
There are still many questions and concerns regarding Opera Max. As data will be passing through Opera’s servers, there will definitely be some eyebrows raised with regard to security and privacy issues, though Opera promises to measure only how much data is used and saved. There is also the matter of whether their servers will be able to handle the amount Internet traffic that will flood it once the service goes public. But answering these questions is what this beta testing period will be all about. If you’re interested in this feature and want to help Opera fine tune Opera Max, hit the source link below to read the instructions on how to join the very limited beta testing program.
SOURCE: Opera
VIA: Engadget