Opera Coast, a minimalist browser that Opera Software launched for the iPhone back in April (and released on the iPad in September 2013) has received a substantial update on Tuesday bringing out four new features.
For starters, the app now supports Apple’s Handoff technology (requires iCloud, iOS 8, Yosemite and Bluetooth 4.0) so you can start browsing on your iPhone or iPad and continue right where you left off in your OS X browser, be it Safari, Opera or whatever app happens to be set as your default Mac browser.
And if you own an iPhone 6 Plus, the elegant Coast app will delight you with its all-new two-pane landscape mode support. Jump past the fold for other enhancements in Coast 4.0.
As mentioned before, when browsing the web using Coast running on an iPhone 6 Plus, the new landscape interface provides quick access to the New Sites stack on the side of the speed dial. Your Home screen in Coast and the app’s search feature now support landscape orientation as well.
Check out the overview video below.
The company’s webpage-compression technology, Opera Turbo, is now present in Opera Coast 4.0 and enabled by default. Moreover, Turbo mode automatically kicks in when roaming out of your network, to save you from insane data roaming charges.
You can enable or disable Turbo mode manually within the app’s settings interface, as shown below.
More importantly, the new Discover feed (depicted top of post) kicks in when searching.
As the name suggests, Discover puts popular news items, social updates and other content at your fingertip. Just swipe left or right to flip through different topics and news articles that may pique your interest or tap the article to read.
The feature basically generates the latest news articles from all over the internet, but without requiring you to proactively search.
This is Discover in action.
Discover is meant to “amuse, inform and distract you when you’re at the bus stop, have 10 minutes to kill between meetings, or are lounging around on a lazy Sunday.”
It’s also cool that the gesture-driven web browser now supports one-tap instant sharing to multiple social networks, including Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Facebook’s WhatsApp and more.
Here’s one-tap sharing in Coast.
Sharing works hand in hand with the new Coast Cards feature that turns links into stylized images that can be captioned before sharing. Every Card contains Coast branding and a download link and can be customized to your liking.
Finally, Coast now lets you open links in it from Safari: just use the multi-purpose Share button in Safari to bring up sharing choices and then tap the option to open the webpage in Opera Coast. The same ‘Open In’ feature was added to Opera Mini in yesterday’s update.
Developers advertise Opera Coast as a browser that entertains you, without getting in your way, and I’ve (mostly) found that to be the case.
“We believe there is more to the web than just a handful of favorite sites and the first page of search results,” says the blurb.
Opera Coast 4.0 changelog:
- Share instantly — Just one tap on your favorite social networks and out goes the content you find online to all of your friends. We now support Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Line, WhatsApp, KakaoTalk, VKontakte & Odnoklassniki.
- Discover the web — Enter a world of news, sites, updates and more. Swipe left or right to browse through different trending articles.
- Browse fast with Opera Turbo — Enabled by default, Opera Turbo speeds up your browsing when you’re on a slow network. Opera Turbo compresses pages to use less data and automatically turns on when you roam out of your network.
- Switch from your iDevice to your Mac — Handoff pages and continue browsing on your Mac’s default browser. Handoff requires that Bluetooth 4 and are iCloud enabled on Mac OS X and iOS.
- Other updates — Landscape mode for iPhone 6 Plus.
The 26.2-megabyte universal app requires an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad with iOS 7.0 or later.
Download Opera Coast free in the App Store.