Opera Announces New PC, Mobile Web Browsers

Opera Announces New PC, Mobile Web Browsers

Opera today announced a new version of its PC-based web browser, plus a new mobile browser called Opera Touch.

“Today, we are introducing a new type of web experience,” Opera’s Krystian Kolondra says, “one where you can have a continuous flow of your content across all your devices.”

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The Opera browser for PCs includes a new feature called Instant Search, which lets users quickly find information online by typing ALT + Space (or accessing a dedicated button in the UI).

But the marquee feature, perhaps, is Flow, which links the PC browser with Opera’s new mobile browser, Opera Touch, so you can share links, images, videos, and notes between the devices without requiring any logins or passwords.

“People invented life hacks because no simple solutions were available,” Opera’s Kocemba explains. “We’ve fixed that. In Opera Touch, setting up the connection between your smartphone and your desktop browser takes only one step.”

That one step is a QR scan: You use Opera Mobile on your phone to scan a code in your desktop Opera browser to establish a link between the two.

Opera Mobile has other interesting features, including its ability to be used one-handed, with navigation and other key browser functions located within the reach of your thumb via a new Fast Action Button. The browser also starts up in Search mode, and it supports voice search and QR and barcode scanning.

Opera Touch is available for free for Android in the Google Play Store today, and it is coming soon to iOS. The desktop Opera browser is available for free for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

 

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Conversation 9 comments

  • JHeredia

    Premium Member
    25 April, 2018 - 8:56 am

    <p>I'm really intrigued by this, especially the one-handed mode in mobile. WP browser used to be good for that with everything at the bottom. It also saddens me that they pulled this kind of PC/Mobile integration off before Edge…the pace of progress in MS…well, it's been discussed. </p><p>I've never gotten in to Chrome, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on how this new offering compares to the existing options. I'd be game to switch if it looked worth it. </p>

  • Pbike908

    25 April, 2018 - 8:58 am

    <p>Looks like the browser innovation wars are really heating up. The con to this is they all have so many options and switches anymore it's somewhat confusing.</p>

  • cheetahdriver

    Premium Member
    25 April, 2018 - 10:21 am

    <p>I have found Opera to be quite the competitive web browser. I switched to a mix of Opera and Edge when a Firefox revision started loading my CPU at 95%, and stayed after they apparently fixed the issue. Edge is not bad for reading sites (using it for this site now) and Opera is good for Gmail sites (which I have 6 open in it right now as well). I am not a Chrome fan because of Google. </p>

  • AnthonyE1778

    25 April, 2018 - 11:42 am

    <p>An interesting new browser if not an entirely new concept. Of course this 'Flow' marquee feature is a copy of Microsoft's 'Continue on PC' functionality except Opera is already doing it better on their FIRST try by having it flow both ways (to and from phone and to and from PC). IT will be interesting to see how this develops, or if it develops at all.</p>

  • seapea

    25 April, 2018 - 1:09 pm

    <p>bummer they couldn't keep up the VPN.</p>

  • DefCon420

    25 April, 2018 - 2:29 pm

    <p>No matter what Opera does I would never ever allow a Chinese owned browser to exist on any device or computer I own. Common security sense. And now Opera want to be all linked between phone and desktop, yeah fuck that noise.</p>

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    26 April, 2018 - 1:56 am

    <p>Alt+Space is a Windows reserved keypress for opening the window menu. It is very useful if a window is no longer visible, you can use the keyboard to get it back onto the display.</p>

  • wocowboy

    Premium Member
    26 April, 2018 - 6:17 am

    <p>This new incarnation of Opera looks very interesting, but I am quite hesitant to install it on my LG V30 because the last time I installed an Opera browser on it, it started putting ads on my phone's lockscreen and little icons would pop up on the main screen once in a while, that were actually links to app installers, and I found out that Opera was the culprit for all of this nonsense. Uninstalling the browser did not remove those lockscreen ads either, I had to do a complete reset of the phone to get rid of them. I was NOT happy! So, my question is, does this new browser do the same thing? If it does, I want nothing to do with it. </p>

  • david.thunderbird

    26 April, 2018 - 1:01 pm

    <p>Can't touch that. Even ignoring the china part, it is FREE therefore YOU are the product. </p>

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