Opera’s New WebKit Browser Now Available As Beta On Android

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Opera’s new web browser based on the WebKit rendering engine is now available in beta form for users with Android devices. The beta gives us a taste of Opera’s first WebKit browser, which comes after the company announced earlier this month that it will be dropping its own Presto rendering engine this year.

WebKit powers a number of popular web browsers, including Google Chrome, Safari, and the previous stock Android browsers (before Chrome took over). It’s generally considered the best rendering engine available, and it’s usually the one that designers and developers consider first when building websites.

For users, then, Opera’s decision to drop its own rendering engine in favor of WebKit is good news. But that’s not the only change to look forward to in the latest version of the Opera browser.

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Opera has also been redesigned from the ground up deliver a fresh new look that’s clean, and easy to navigate. Trademark features including Speed Dial are still present, alongside things like pop-up blocking, a download manager, and cross-platform syncing.

Opera’s bandwidth-saving caching feature is also still included, but this time it’s called Off-Road Mode. There’s also a handy new ‘Discover’ tab that presents you with a list of popular news stories.

Check out the latest version of Opera in the video below.

You can download the Opera Browser Beta from Google Play now using the source link below, and like previous versions, it’s completely free.