Opera browser: Power-saving mode to improve the autonomy of the handsets

The Opera development team releases a new version of the browser in a developer channel characterized by the presence of an unprecedented energy-saving mode. The developers promise a reduced consumption by up to 50% compared to competing browsers.

The browser is one of the most-used applications with both desktop systems, both with portable and, at the same time, a major source of battery consumption tablet, 2-in-1 and notebook. Based on this finding, the Opera development team today announced a new version of the browser – for now distributed in the developer channel – that presents the public with an unprecedented energy-saving mode, thanks – say the developers, the impact on consumption can be reduced up to 50% compared to that generated from browser competitors from Chrome. A benefit, as you can easily guess, will be the users who use a laptop to access the Internet.

The power-saving mode can be activated very quickly: when the laptop is disconnected from the, the ” power saver ” icon appears next to the search bar and the address. It just click it to enable energy savings.

The browser also automatically suggests the activation when the level of battery charge reaches 20%. If you prefer to make just tick the corresponding option always visible icon following the path Settings > Browser> Power Saver > Always show power saver icon.

Opera has presented in detail the measures introduced to curb the consumption of battery by means of the option described above, including optimizations specifically:

• The decline of the tab in the background.
• The intervention reducing CPU utilization by optimizing JavaScript timer.
• Automatic pause of plug-in unused.
• Reducing the frame rate to 30 FPS.
• The regulation of video playback parameters.
• Pause the animation of browser themes.

No strange alchemy so to reduce the browser’s impact on battery consumption but, rather, careful management of resources, also accomplished by disabling those not used or not needed to authorize enforcement tasks.

The results on the field, say the developers, are promising. The schedule below summarizes the results of the tests carried out using a portable Lenovo X250 (Core i7-5600U, 16GB of RAM) and a Dell XPS 12 (16GB RAM) with both Windows 10 and power saving mode set to high performance. For the test was used Selenium WeDriver through which they were automatically loaded 11 popular websites including YouTube.

Each page has been opened in a separate tab, without closing the previous one. It was scrolled five times and left the active page for a minute. The test was repeated until the final exhaustion of the battery.

The new energy-saving mode is the most important innovation of the new release of Opera (developer version), but not the only one. The team has grasped the opportunity to introduce a change to the navigation mode via VPN, introduced for the first time in late April, useful for those who wish to exploit it only with certain web sites. The option to navigate using the VPN is now an integral part of the navigation mode in private window.

Please remember that the features described above are included in the latest developer version of the Opera browser, as usual, anticipated features that may be incorporated into the stable release. To download, simply connect to this page.