Opera Max is an ad-supported data management and privacy app that allows users to regulate how much data their apps consume while protecting your privacy in unsecured connections.
Initially released in 2014. Opera decided to discontinue Opera Max, according to its blog post on August 2017, saying that "The product had a substantially different value proposition than our browser products, and represented a different focus for Opera."
After having the app delisted from Google Play, Samsung saves it from its inevitable death.
The South Korean conglomerate company replaces Opera Max with its own privacy and data savings app called 'Samsung Max'.
Samsung said that its own version of Max has an "enhanced design and user experience" compared to Opera’s discontinued version, with two key Data Saving features that help users monitor data usage and manage privacy, while allowing users to access the internet securely.
The app is particularly aimed for users in specific countries, helping the company build locally relevant and beneficial software and hardware.
Samsung Max picks on the traces Opera left.
Sporting the same logo (only with a color change - red on Opera Max to blue on Samsung Max), the app works similarly by scanning users' phones to identifying which installed apps are using the most data. It’s also able to actively compress images, videos, music files, and web pages in apps and browsers to save even more data quotas.
There are also options to manage data permissions for specific apps, and to block auto background data usage.
The app's privacy feature can come in handy for those that frequently use public Wi-Fi, as the app can encrypt open, untrusted, and unknown hotspots with just a single tap.
There is also tracker blocking and a Domain Name System (DNS) masking service.
Initially, Samsung preloads the Max app on the company’s Galaxy A and Galaxy J devices in India, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Thailand, and Vietnam. Other Samsung users can also download the app from Google Play or the Galaxy App store.
And for those who had previously installed Opera Max, an update that was released on February 23rb, 2018, automatically replaces Opera Max with Samsung Max.
Similar to Opera Max, users can use the app's data saving feature with just one tap. But if they want to use the privacy feature, they need to activate it with a time limitation, with the option to add more time which requires manual procedure of tapping. With the Premium option turned on, the app will remove this time limitation and instead show prominent ads when the device is charging.