Opera Mini, solution to subscriptions without unlimited data plans

Not everyone has a subscription with an unlimited data plans (not even all the guys with iPhones) so it’s important to keep an eye on your bandwidth usage. I’m not gonna tell you how often you should check your monthly bandwidth usage, but I’m gonna present you a little piece of software, the Opera Mini browser that will help you stay under your data plan’s limit without even thinking about it.

Opera Mini main screen

What makes Opera Mini special

The engine: most important thing about Opera Mini that you won’t even notice. That’s why I’ll tell you how Opera Mini works: the URL you enter in the address bar is processed by some Opera servers that will send your browser the resulting page, formatted for your screen size and compressed to just a few kilobytes.

It’s simple, it’s fast and takes little bandwidth.

Other Opera Mini advantages

The best part about Opera is the way it works with the websites you want to visit. But Opera Mini as other aces in its sleeves that makes it a must have mobile browser:

• skins: you can customize its looks to your own taste
• speed dial: access your favorite websites with a push of a button
• sync bookmarks with your Opera account so that you have the same bookmarks in your desktop Opera browser and other mobile phones you might have. Also helps migrating to a new phone
• save offline web pages for later reading when you’ll have the time or don’t have an Internet connection

My blog on Opera Mini - full page

My blog - zoom on header

How well does it fares with limited data plans?

I’ll give you my example: I have a 25 MB monthly data plan (it’s low, I know) and I’m using Opera Mini two hours a day during workdays plus email checking and using other bandwidth consuming apps, and I’ve never went over the 25 MB I have. I think this speaks well in the name o Opera Mini. Please give it a try and tell me what you think. They even have a special simulator to see whow Opera Mini works – check it out here.