If you are an Opera user -- millions of users in India are -- here is a news for you. The company on January 26 updated its popular Opera Mini browser, adding several new features to it. The prominent among the new features are support for 13 Indian languages and a new QR-code reader. The download manager in the browser has also been improved.

Globally, the Opera Mini now supports 90 languages. In India, it supports Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu along with English.

"In India, more than 70% of the population does not use English as their primary language. Opera web browsers have always supported reading content in multiple languages. We believe the addition of 13 Indian languages to Opera Mini's UI will further help lower barriers for people to come online for the first time," said Sunil Kamath, vice president (South Asia & SouthEast Asia) at Opera Software.

In earlier versions of Opera Mini, the UI language was set according to the language on the Android OS. With the new Opera Mini, users can choose from the list of 90 installed languages. The most common languages in a person's country will be shown in top of the language list in the settings menu. Users will also be prompted to select a language the first time they use the updated version of the browser.

Opera says that its Mini browser, which is more efficient and lightweight than full browsers, is used by over 100 million Android users in emerging markets like India.

"We are continuing our efforts to bring the internet to as many people as possible, not only by making it possible to access the internet on low-bandwidth networks with our compression technology, but also by making sure that our browser is easy for anyone to use and understand," said Christian Uribe, product manager for Opera Mini.

The new browser comes with a QR-code reader and generator and an improved download manager.

"We've also included a QR code generator (in Mini browser), so if you want to share a link with a friend nearby, you can create a QR code to any page yourself," says Uribe. "(For download manager) we've made loads of improvements and tweaks lately to improve the stability and speed of downloads."

