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Opera Adds Power-Saving Mode, Offers 'Up To 50 Percent' Longer Battery Life (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the battery-saving dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Opera Software has added a power-saving mode to its desktop web browser that "can increase the battery life by as much as 50 percent." The company claims optimizations are what has made the battery life increase possible, including "reducing activity from background tabs, adapting page-redrawing frequency, and tuning video-playback parameters." Opera claimed that a laptop running Windows 10 64-bit with the power-saving feature enabled lasts 49 percent longer than one with Chrome put under equal stress. Ad blocking was turned on during the test as well. The feature is not enabled by default, but a blue battery icon will appear next to the browser's address bar whenever the power cable is unplugged from your computer. When the laptop's battery is running low, the browser will suggest turning on power-saving mode, too. Earlier this week, Opera launched a new VPN app for iOS that is free to use and includes unlimited data.

42 comments

  1. Sounds great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant

    When will this be available for Linux? I'm still rocking version 12.16.

    I'm kidding, of course, I don't run that, it's too old.

  2. Linux version by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds great! When will this be available for Linux? I'm still rocking version 12.16

    I'm just kidding, of course. I don't run that, it's too old (current Windows version is 37.something).

    1. Re:Linux version by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      version 37 is available for linux, and packaged for a dozen distros. look at your own link again.

    2. Re:Linux version by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem is that version 12.16 is about a million times superior to version 37.

  3. Hmmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ad blocking was turned on during the test as well...

    I didn't read TFA but I bet Ad blocking isn't turned off by default when you enable power-saving option...

    1. Re:Hmmmm... by NotInHere · · Score: 1

      I didn't read TFA

      At this place, this is the assumed default. I've been modded +5 informative already when all what I did was RTFA and answer some question somebody had.

    2. Re:Hmmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      all the optimizations in the world.. and yet it was the simple ad blocker, no doubt, that gave 90% of the improvement.

    3. Re:Hmmmm... by chipschap · · Score: 3, Informative

      I don't know, Chrome is a real power hog ... if I run my laptop (Asus Zenbook) with no Chrome running, I get about 10 hours battery life, as compared with about 5 hours with Chrome running.

    4. Re: Hmmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      -1

      Why would GNAA have an .eu domain?

    5. Re: Hmmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Moving in to new, stronger markets.

    6. Re:Hmmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Switch to Lightning

    7. Re:Hmmmm... by mindmaster064 · · Score: 1

      Chrome is a power-whore. I have one of those Core M machines that sips power and can run about 10 hours on battery if nothing is running really. In this state with the screen down the whole laptop draws about 4-5 watts, but the minute you switch on Chrome 6-8 constant. It's all the phone-homing, syncing, and other stuff that is constantly running in the background that draws the power. Now this is about a 30-50% increase in use so for these types of computers this is a massive test increase in draw. I was measuring this with idle pages as well. You will find chrome is nearly ALWAYS running and doing something even if you sitting a web page that hasn't moved for an hour.

    8. Re:Hmmmm... by chipschap · · Score: 1

      Switch to Lightning

      It's a decent suggestion, but you missed the part where I said "laptop" :)

    9. Re:Hmmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I get about 2 hours with Chrome open on Mint. If I killall chrome, I can get about 8 hours.

  4. Why use Opera? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    There are better options, like Pale Moon. If you value your freedom, you'll use an FOSS browser like Pale Moon. But the sheep won't care and will run closed source software like Opera anyway.

    1. Re:Why use Opera? by khz6955 · · Score: 1

      I use Pale Moon, except when certain sites don't work unless noscript + flash + Java are required, which defeats the concept of safe browsing ...

  5. When the laptop's battery is running low, by PPH · · Score: 1

    the browser will suggest turning on power-saving mode, too.

    A bit late, IMO.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  6. Up to any ridiculous number by Mal-2 · · Score: 1

    And I can put this funny looking thing on the hood of your car to reduce drag and provide up to 1377% better fuel economy. Up to includes zero. It even includes negative numbers, so if all my elaborate hood ornament does is obstruct your vision and slow the car down, I still haven't made any fraudulent claims.

    --
    How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
    1. Re:Up to any ridiculous number by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, it's only fraudulent if it provides 1378% better fuel economy :)

    2. Re:Up to any ridiculous number by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not quite. You need to have at least 1 set of environmental and operational parameters that allow you to achieve the ridiculous number. While the "upto" value isn't really informative or useful for any given set of conditions, it is not nearly as useless as you are portraying.

    3. Re:Up to any ridiculous number by Mal-2 · · Score: 1

      OK then my one circumstance is when you attach a tow bar from the hood ornament to another vehicle and leave your car in Neutral to run the air conditioning. Somewhere in the small print it says "additional components may be required" (like an entire second vehicle) and "individual results may vary".

      --
      How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
  7. Power-Saving. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've never understood why stuff like Phones and Tablets don't nerf the screen and UI harder in power-saving mode.

    An easy way is take a third off the screen refresh rate.
    Cancel animations, disable transparency. Maybe cut or skip the UI responsiveness and refresh rate instead of the screen.
    Redraws are pretty expensive on the cycle side.
    Cores tend to disable, as far as I know, without even having Power Saving modes on.
    Maybe lower the Wifi and phones power if you know you are in a dense location, coverage-wise.
    All options, that is. Having all of these things by default, with no choice, would be annoying.

    Could even have some trigger event in it that will disable other features as well, such as GPS, bluetooth, etc.
    Turning them back on won't disable Power Saving, these would only be toggles to quickly turn off power-hungry features you might not need.

    Better yet if you go one step further and add multiple power-saving modes, one for general power-saving and one for extreme power-saving in emergency situations.
    And, of course, have these open for apps to control too.

    As for laptops, I know some laptops nerf refresh rate on the monitor in battery mode.
    Not sure if recent Windows can let you set Power Profiles for turning off certain other features when in battery mode.
    I'd HOPE there was such a feature.
    Last experience I have with it is WinXP, and its power management was horribly basic that only let you do stuff like control when screen, hard drives go off, when standby and hibernate happen.

    1. Re:Power-Saving. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I run my iPhone in greyscale mode - gives much improved battery life (Settings - General - Accessibility) but I only use it for phone calls, SMS and emails so lack of colo(u)r is not an issue.

  8. Ok yeah that sounds nice. by Kellamity · · Score: 1

    But how about first fixing the proxy server thing so when I'm using it at work I stop getting those annoying pop-ups telling me that auto update can't get through the proxy server. Either add a setting to turn off auto update or make it actually work, I'd be cool with either. Opera mini / mobile also can't handle wifi connections that require a redirect to browser signing, making them pretty much useless. Maybe I should just make my own browser. With blackjack, and hookers.

  9. THE FAT LADY HAS ALREADY SUNG by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and the curtain has closed on this chinaware.

  10. OS X Mavericks Called... by macs4all · · Score: 1

    From 3 years ago. It wants its System-Wide App Nap and Safari Power Saver features back...

    1. Re:OS X Mavericks Called... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      I was wondering how much of this is simply pulling the relevant WebKit changes into their copy of the Blink tree.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:OS X Mavericks Called... by macs4all · · Score: 1

      I was wondering how much of this is simply pulling the relevant WebKit changes into their copy of the Blink tree.

      Well, as much as I would love to think that, I am pretty sure it is not the case.

      I am pretty sure that App Nap and Safari Power Save are "private frameworks" for OS X and Safari. Remember, WebKit is only the "rendering engine" (I think); not the entire Browser; and if this was part of WebKit, I'm pretty sure the other 99% of the WebKit-Based browsers would have started to tout this "battery saving" feature by now.

  11. Go Opera by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've never used but this is really cool. Get it?

  12. Re:12.16 by jones_supa · · Score: 1

    From a security perspective you are probably surprisingly safe, as nobody probably bothers to attack the Presto engine anymore. But do all websites render properly?

  13. Re:12.16 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    12.18 is out for Windows: http://ftp.opera.no/ftp/pub/opera/win/1218/en/

  14. Have had Vivaldi installed awhile now by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

    Apparently an offering by a splinter group from Opera (keeping to the original script) yet not enough to even hint at a constant basis, Opera 12.17 is my still my favorite. https://vivaldi.com/?lang=en_U... I thought at the time it was the latest Opera - was released just after Opera was sold.

    Was a true surprise and pleasure to be able to import my Opera bookmarks, I've been collecting them for so long I have quite a list (many broken), always had to export an .adr file for Opera and an HTML to us on other browsers.

    Vivaldi has an interesting cookie choice of the questionable (the heck that mean) "Cookie and data exceptions" (Host and or (not sure) Behavior), I was hoping for pre 12.17's deletion of cookies when it's shut down. A single Opera for as many sites as you wish to visit at one time. Vivaldi loaded and logged into /. has 5 Vivaldi.exe's running, ala firefox.

    I'm still running the first version I downloaded, haven't used it enough to require it updated.

    Vivaldi 1.0.118.19 (Developer Build)
    Revision 43f4fbf5070d8e8836b0b95209cdce919fde9520
    OS Windows
    Blink 537.36 (@2c4eb9b03dda59544bfe6f10f994c66411cf41c7)
    JavaScript V8 3.30.33.16
    Flash (Disabled)
    User Agent Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/40.0.2214.115 Safari/537.36 Vivaldi/1.0.118.19
    Command Line "C:\Users\tone\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\Application\vivaldi.exe" --always-authorize-plugins --flag-switches-begin --flag-switches-end
    Executable Path C:\Users\tone\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\Application\vivaldi.exe
    Profile Path C:\Users\tone\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\User Data\Default
    Variations ed1d377-e1cc0f14

  15. Laktos version by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If we could only get a laptop version of this. I started to try the desktop version but noticed that non of my desktops ran on batterys

  16. Where's all the hype? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sure, probably none of us use Opera, but this is awesome. I've been wondering why Chrome and Firefox don't do this, and now that Opera is pushing this through hopefully they will follow suite too.

  17. Re:12.16 by jones_supa · · Score: 1

    Then why are you using something as impractical as that?