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Opera Signs Nokia Phone Deal

Posted by Zonk on from the tiny-little-singers dept.

Masq666 writes "Opera Software stated on Friday that it had signed a deal with Nokia to put its mobile Internet browser on several Nokia phones. Opera has licensed its mobile Internet browser for a total of 11 Nokia phone models in recent years. Opera's CFO said he expected the rise in the number of phones with Opera's browser to outpace the increase in models."

17 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Yep by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 4, Funny

    And for an extra $10/mo, you can use the browser without ads.

    1. Re:Yep by UWC · · Score: 4, Interesting
      The mobile version of Opera has a 14-day trial period (ad-free) and then won't work without registration (or probably some other workaround; I have yet to investigate).

      I installed it on my Nokia 3660 a while back and let the trial run out before I got around to trying to use it.

      Is the nature of this announcement merely that Opera will officially offer versions that support an increasing number of Nokia phone models? Should I assume users will still have to pay for Opera?

      --
      Honor Among Slackers. A veri
    2. Re:Yep by Rits · · Score: 3, Informative

      Opera comes pre-installed or on a complimentary CD on some phones, including some Nokia models. And that is what this deal is about. You don't need a deal with Nokia for offering a third-party shareware program...

      See here for the list of current phones where you can either install Opera, or where it is pre-installed.

      --
      If you don't like having choices made for you, you should start making your own. - Neal Stephenson
  2. please no adds by Xiph · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As long as it's without the adds, I think it's great to see what i still consider the best browser to be present on cell phones. Albeit that probably means the cell phones are running CE...

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    Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
    1. Re:please no adds by ianezz · · Score: 3, Interesting
      As long as it's without the adds, I think it's great to see what i still consider the best browser to be present on cell phones. Albeit that probably means the cell phones are running CE...

      Well, high-end Nokia phones run Symbian OS (obviously: Nokia is a notable member of the Symbian consortium...), which basically is the good 'ol Epoc 32 which ran on Arm PDAs like the Psion Series 5. And Opera has been running for years on such machines, so that should be a no-brainer.

      OTOH, Nokia uses its own GUI on top of Symbian, so this will probably mean some minor adjustments for Opera.

    2. Re:please no adds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative
      What do you mean "port"? It seems to me (from the large list of compatible OSes) that Opera was built to be cross-OS capabile from the ground up in the latest versions. The list (in case you were intersted):
      • Windows
      • Solaris Sparc
      • QNX
      • OS/2
      • MacOS
      • Linux Sparc
      • Linux PowerPC
      • Linux i386
      • FreeBSD i386
      • BeOS
  3. Symbian OS by Broiler · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How long until Opera is the defacto browser for all Symbian OS phones?

    --
    My sigs offend the max # of people all over the world, regardless of race, religion, color, sex or creed. It's a gift.
    1. Re:Symbian OS by nafmo · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well, good luck fitting Minimo on those phones. I would wager that the reason why all the screenshots of Minimo running all show Google is not because Google hires Mozilla people, but because their page is what you can display before you run out of memory.

      Opera is designed for running well on low-end machines, which gives it a clear upper hand when it comes to running it on small devices such as mass-market mobile phones.

  4. Minimo? by molrak · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What does this mean for Minimo (Mozilla's mini-browser that was funded/supported by Nokia)? It's been less than a year since they announced their financial support for the project,. I know the mozilla foundation released a few early versions for Windows CE/Pocket, but I haven't heard anything about the mobile phone version.

    --
    You're only as smart as your brain.
  5. Re:Opera? by Broiler · · Score: 5, Funny

    cant really think of anything as unusable as opera in a cellphone...
    Excel

    --
    My sigs offend the max # of people all over the world, regardless of race, religion, color, sex or creed. It's a gift.
  6. Can anyone comment on the usability... by Lisandro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...of Opera on cellphones? The main reason i use Opera as my everyday browser on Linux/Windows is because of it's excellent user interface. How does that translate to phones?

    It must be hard browsing without mouse gestures :)

    1. Re:Can anyone comment on the usability... by it0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It works out great, I use version 7.31 on my zaurus.
      I don't understand how it works, but somebody told me that it is a css hack. Anyway for example you have 4 modes, with or without pics and fit to screen (columnn mode) and normal rendering. Let's say you have this complex page with css2 and javascript, some magic happens and it's completely readable on 320x240 in column mode.

    2. Re:Can anyone comment on the usability... by Wild+Bill+TX · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's not a CSS hack at all. Each page can have a different CSS for each different type of media, including screen, handheld, print, and more. It's up to your browser to decide which one to use.

      In the case of a mobile Opera browser, it will use your page's handheld CSS, if it exists. If it does not exist, the way page elements are displayed is simply altered to the default. For example, table cells are all displayed in one column.

      This is the way HTML is designed and meant to be. Pages should use a semantic structure, with elements such as <h1>, <p>, and so forth, leaving the way it's displayed up to the browser or a CSS file (separate presentation from content). Unfortunately, that's not the way most pages are written today, due to failing standards support on the part of Internet Exploiter and lack of willingness to adopt unfamiliar ways, so there's usually only one optimal presentation: your desktop's browser. For those pages, Opera's SSR simply does the best it can.

      --
      Audioscrobbler
    3. Re:Can anyone comment on the usability... by SilicaiMan · · Score: 3, Informative

      Press shift-F11 and you'll see for yourself.

  7. Re:Opera? by LPetrazickis · · Score: 3, Informative

    Small Screen Rendering is available from the view menu in any recent version of Opera, including Opera 8b3 (Linux). It's surprisingly nifty, though kinda useless on the desktop.

    OTOH, the new "Fit to Window Width" feature is super useful whenever there's a horizontal sidebar or if you want to collapse a frameset into a single page.:)

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    Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
  8. Shards of malformed html by Nexboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It might be interesting to run these browser-equipped PDA's and phones against the random shards of malformed html generated by Michael Zalewski's program mentioned previously on Slashdot.

    I did a quick check of an embedded browser I had laying around, and it died instantly.

    --
    Nexsan Technologies SATA RAID
  9. Re:I've been using Opera and it's a nice addition by SilicaiMan · · Score: 3, Insightful
    since this will be an ad-free version, you won't have to worry about all those pop-up and other ads at all.

    What pop-up ads? Opera's ads do not pop up. They are as inconspicuous as they can get, and limited to a narrow horizontal band at the top of the screen.

    Plus, I don't see anybody complaining about Slashdot's ads. Subscribers (you know, people who pay money) don't see Slashdot's ads. Same thing with Opera.