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Opera Touch the new Android browser from Opera designed for One-Handed Use and beams your mobile to desktop

by Felix Omondi

The Norwegian/Chinese Company has today released a new mobile browser for Android devices. Dubbed the Opera Touch, the new mobile browser comes with clever interface choices that make it easier for one-handed use.

When you launch the browser, you are first greeted by the address bar; in which you can type in the URL or the search query you want to run. When you have opened a website, and you scroll up, a button will appear at the bottom of the screen letting you easily switch to other opened tab or start a new one.

Come to think of it; virtually all mainstream mobile browser has the address bar and tab buttons located at the top of the screen. That means to open/close a tab, you must reposition your hand to reach them, but with Opera Touch, you simply do that without much hand movements.

Opera Touch lets you beam content from your mobile to Desktop Browser

The new Opera Touch enables you to push sites from your Android phone to your desktop and vice versa. Provided you are using Opera browser on both platforms simultaneously; some of the beamings will happen autonomously thanks to the ‘continue from computer’ button, which comes up when you open a new tab on your mobile.

However, if you want to make sure that a site will transfer over to your desktop computer to mobile, you can always send it over using the Opera Touch’s Flow feature. The Flow feature creates a list of sites you have shared from one platform to the other, and you can Opera Touch the new Android browser from Opera designed for One-Handed Use and beams your mobile to desktop even scroll through them later.

But is it enough?…

When it is all said and done, it remains to be seen whether the new features will sway users from other browsers they have been using to Opera Touch. Going by statistics, you are probably using Chrome browser on your desktop, and for the Opera’s Flow feature to work, you need to be using the Opera desktop browser. Otherwise, it will be a useless feature on your Opera mobile browser.

Then there is the ‘little matter’ that even Chrome has a tab syncing feature; though it is a bit harder to use compared to the new Flow feature. There are also report that Chrome could soon be getting its navigation bar moved to the bottom. So Opera’s effort might be too little too late, but that remains to be seen.

Kicks of a dying horse?

Opera, in all honesty, is not competitive in the browser space. It has good traction in mobile space particularly in developing countries where the cost of connecting to the internet is high, but that’s just about it! When it comes to the desktop space, even in places its mobile browser is doing so well, users more often than not choose Chrome and other alternative browsers in place of Opera desktop.

Now and then, the company releases a new innovative feature on their browser. Take for instance in January last year; they released the Neon browser; a conceptual browser that I did like. However, it has never received any update since its release, which could only mean Opera abandoned the idea. As it appears, Opera is continually seeking users’ attention by outing a new feature now and then, but if that’s enough to attract users remains to be seen.

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