Opera Mini 9 for iOS brings video compression to eliminate buffering

With dropping prices for mobile data and faster speeds with increasing LTE coverage, Opera Mini and its compression technology has been fading in recent years. Opera is still kicking around though and it just released Mini version 9 for iOS with what the team thinks is a compelling feature – video compression.

Currently 53% of the global mobile data is taken up by streaming videos, so it’s a big market.

It hasn’t been easy going, however, even with LTE – in the US 40.8% of people have complained about waiting for videos to buffer. In countries with less developed networks the percentage climbs quickly. Also, videos eat up your data plan much faster than browsing web pages does.

Opera Mini 9 users the Rocket Optimizer engine – once you update the app you’ll find it in the data saving options. Rocket Optimizer is a new part of Opera’s Turbo mode, which comes from Skyfire.

If you don’t remember, Skyfire was a compression-enabled mobile browser too, but its headlining feature was video support (even Flash video!). Early last year Opera acquired Skyfire for its technology.

You can download Opera Mini 9 from the Apple App Store for free right now. There’s nothing on the Android version yet, however.