SAN FRANCISCO, May 12 — Opera claims its new power-saving mode can extend battery life by up to 50 per cent compared to Chrome.

Opera has released a number of improvement to its web browser in the last couple of months. It added an ad blocker to its latest release in May, and added a virtual private network to its developer version in April. Now, the developer version has a “low-power mode.”

The browser prompts users to activate low-power mode when battery capacity gets down to 20 per cent. Here’s how Opera says it has managed save on battery power:

• reduced activity in background tabs
• fewer instructions sent to “wake” the processor
• unused plug-ins paused automatically
• reduced frame rate to 30 frames per second for animations and refreshes
• tuned video playback
• optimised browser themes

The company did not reveal when the low-power mode might make it into the official release. — AFP-Relaxnews