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> Opera Mini/Mobile ran some sort of proxy service that made things faster [...] In 2017ish, I've overheard from a friend who used to work for Opera, that back

> Opera Mini/Mobile ran some sort of proxy service that made things faster [...] In 2017ish, I've overheard from a friend who used to work for Opera, that back in their time they were using Presto (their in-house engine) on the backend to pre-render/optimise/compress pages. Think smart VPN/proxy. Also, heck yes, Opera on "dumb" phones was an amazing experience - compared to the built-in contemporary browsers.

lxgr 2y ago
This was how I browsed the web on the go for the better part of a decade, before browser became good enough and prices (and download times) per megabyte cheap/fast enough to actually use the full web on mobile devices. It was absolutely amazing. And it's still around! I have an install on my iPhone; while the app seems to be unpublished in most western countries' App Store, I can still use it just fine. I believe the Android and J2ME versions are still actively installable. Although I just gave it a try, and the iOS version seems to not be the real deal anymore; it seems to use a media compression proxy and regular WebKit to render on the iOS side. The Android version still does server-side rendering.
- anthk 2y ago
  At https://f-droid.org https://f-droid.org you have a J2ME emulator.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    I've also tried that with J2ME Loader (which is also on the Play Store), and itw works! But the native Android version still works for me as well.