Drawbacks of not using Opera Mini while on travel

While on travel, my smartphone is my first friend- helping me identify cheapest mode of transport, fastest route to a destination, help me download right app for right purpose, help me translate, research and make the right move. This often means buying a local sim card or activating international roaming, both cost me precious money. Last year I ended up buying a regular SingTel sim card in Singapore instead of Tourist card and ended up spending SGD 2.7/MB by mistake [Details here]. This year, my India Airtel Prepaid card drained its balance in minutes when I accidentally turned it on when in Macau. While I learnt my lessons from my mistakes, fortunately you don’t have to, as you are reading this post. Later I figured out that there are some simple decisions in life can make huge difference. Installing Opera Mini browser in your smartphone before your trip is one such smart decision every traveller should make. But then instead of explaining why Opera Mini is a cool browser, let us examine what all are the drawbacks if you decide not to try Opera and rely on whatever default browser your mobile has

Drawback without Opera Mini 1: Waste more time on browsing:

You need to quickly find out opening and closing hours of a tourist attraction, or to check which train to take to a destination, or google best veg restaurants around - these are some of the typical needs why we use our phones during travel- to get the correct information in order to make a right decision. Now, if you are not using Opera, in all probability you will spend more time on your browser struggling to find the correct information, instead of getting busy acting based on that information.

Recent tests show that Opera Mini on extreme-savings mode is 64% faster than UC browser and 72% faster than Chrome. Thus Opera Mini can save you lots of time while on the move. You spend huge amount reaching a foreign destination and once there, you should be spending every minute exploring the destination, not stuck on your phone trying to figure out what to do next. Opera Mini can be your best buddy on the move.

Drawback without Opera Mini 2: Huge Data bills

Internet packs abroad are usually expensive. If you are on roaming with your home country connection, then you will have to shell out a lot for data connection. In such situations, every MB saved can result in several hundred rupees in savings.

By compressing data in advance, Opera Mini has the potential to save up to 90% of the data otherwise consumed while using the web. This implies you can do more for less money or save precious dollars that otherwise have to be spent on a top-up or save on your mobile bill back home. In the extreme savings mode, it saves 2 times more data than UC browser and 3.5 times more data than Chrome.

This may be hard to believe, but if in doubt do try it out yourself. For a month try Opera and monitor data consumption for same kind of usage you did previous month. You will spot a difference.

Drawback without Opera Mini 3: Wait for video/page to load

With availability of high speed data connections, video enabled smartphones, facilities like Facebook Live, everyone is moving from text and photos to videos. With more video content and even more demand to create and share your own videos, it is extremely painful to keep waiting while the video buffers. With conventional browsers you will end up unnecessarily waiting while the video loads or uploads, while Opera Mini’s video boost feature can ensure a much faster streaming of videos, making life easier for you and saving precious time.

Drawback without Opera Mini 4: Language Barrier

There is nothing like getting the information you need in the language you are most comfortable with. Otherwise you will have to spend time and effort trying to translate and most of the time there is a risk that translation is not 100% perfect and using a poorly translated information can have serious consequences.

If you have Opera Mini, it supports close to 90 languages which includes 13 Indian languages as well, eliminating any need for translation. This means more time saved and convenience for you while traveling.

So what’s stopping you? If you haven’t tried Opera Mini yet, now is the time.