Opera Mini vs Photon
When comparing Opera Mini vs Photon, the Slant community recommends Opera Mini for most people. In the question“What are the best Android web browsers?” Opera Mini is ranked 16th while Photon is ranked 26th.
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Pros
Pro Completely free
Pro Very light weight
Great for phones with lower RAM or performance issues.
Pro Has built-in ad blocker
Pro Has a data saver
Opera mini's data saver has two modes - regular and extreme. great for people with smaller data plans when not on wifi. Has also the ability to control the quality of downloaded images and some video optimizations.
Pro Optimized for Facebook
Pro True desktop browser experience
In flash mode you get remote access to desktop Firefox on a Linux server. Unbeatable desktop web compatibility on Android.
Cons
Con Doesn't support some common modern browsers functionalities
Some web pages might look a bit broken but from personal experience it doesn't happen often enough (or at all) to be a major issue.
Con Many bugs
In extreme data saving mode, it sometimes won't load page correctly.
Con Has issues while playing video
It will crash when you are playing video.
Con Videos are compressed twice
In Flash mode, you get an interactive streaming video of a desktop browser running on their server, but this means that when you watch videos (a major use case for Flash mode), which are already compressed, it has to be lossy compressed again to get to you, with noticeable loss of quality. So it's better to watch videos with Flash mode off if you can. There's also a bit of lag when scrolling and such.
Con Flash mode has ads
You can also get an annual subscription to turn these off, but it's $10/year. That's kind of pricey when you can get Puffin Browser Pro with unlimited service for a single payment of $4.