Mediatek has announced that it will be bundling two of its 64-bit LTE system-on-chips, the MT6752 and the MT6732, with software from Opera that promises to double your data plan allowance at no extra cost.
Not much is known about what's happening under the hood. The press release only mentions that the data-savings app will be embedded into the SoCs, geared towards Android; it is available as a stand-alone app on Google's platform.
Opera Max appears to be similar to the Turbo technology used in the company's eponymous browser. It essentially compresses data (video, photos and text) transparently regardless of the application used by a factor of up to 50%.
Anyone remembers Superstor?
It also translates into seemingly faster downloads - your videos load faster, your web pages as well - and lower cost of ownership since the data usage goes down. The clever bits are likely to take place on Opera's servers rather than on the phone itself.
Which means that there shouldn't in theory be any penalty - in terms of general performance or power consumption. Opera also says that vendors will be able to "view the aggregated data of what's happening" when devices are sold and used.
Surprisingly enough, Mediatek bundled Opera Max with its high-end system on chips, not its mainstream ones. The MT6752 packs eight A53 cores clocked at 2GHz plus a Mali-T760 GPU while the MT6732 comes with four of ARM's 64-bit cores.
