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Opera Mini Mobile Browser Officially Released
worb writes "The tiny mobile browser Opera Mini was officially released worldwide today. Opera is known for its PC and mobile browsers, but even the cell phone version Opera require more memory than most phones today are capable of. Opera Mini works by passing pages through Opera's servers to strip them down before they are displayed on the phone. Also, the Register has a story on how this actually means that Opera now offers a reason not to buy a smartphone, a market Opera currently has a strong foothold in."
Screenshots here:m l
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=13423
Interesting discussion here about how good Opera Mini really is or it is not:
http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008770.ht
Opera Mini works by passing pages through Opera's servers to strip them down before they are displayed on the phone.
So does this mean that we can finally see pictures of Jessica Simpson and Seven of Nine naked?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
"...today offers a reason not to buy a smart phone."
Um, no. This is, in fact, the best reason to buy a smart phone yet. Non-smartphones typically save money by having little ram, little flash memory, and slow processors, this makes them cheap and great on batteries. Even with on-the-fly-proxy-html-rewriting surfing the modern broad-band oriented Internet can be a painful experience.
I have a SideKick II (which has Danger's very good html/image compressing proxies behind it), a Nokia 6682 (good Edge GSM phone), and a Treo 650. All of which can download a typical webpage before a SonyEricson T610 can run the most trivial of Java apps. Each of the phones has features I like, but when I need a data device I reach unhesitatingly for the Treo. 320x320 pixels and 300 Mhz beats both proxy-compression and Edge for overall web use for no other reason than more pixels and a more processor make the navigating the received page so much faster. It's also worth noting that now that T-Mobile has rolled out it's Edge network, multi-timeslot downloads are working with the Treo, so in well-covered areas it's twice as fast (~44kbits/s) as a typical GPRS download rate (~22kbits/s). In addition, the Treo has enough processor to play highframe rate videos (TCPMP), makes good use of 2gb SD cards, and has a good OpenSource SSH client (tuSSH).
In short, if you really want to surf from your phone, spend the extra bucks and get a smartphone, or 1000 minutes of use from now you'll wish you had.
I wonder if Opera Mini will also have the ability to handle RSS feeds something like the regular Opera 8.51 does. I'm running it now on my knoppix remaster, and I have several RSS feeds, (including slashdot), and I think it's cool how the little feed download popup in the lower right hand corner of the screen works. Every so often it pops up and shows the download of more stories from the various feeds. Even on dialup, it loads from scratch in less than a minute, sometimes over 180 stories! Then maintains the feed lists with the updates. On a mobile device, do you suppose Opera Mini will have some sort of sound to notify of updated feed lists? Also, the way Opera handles the feeds is superior to Firefox, which only shows the titles of the stories in the bookmarks toolbar folder, in the drop down box. Opera gives you the summary of the story when you click on it, sometimes several lines long, enough for you to decide whether or not you want to click on the main link provided, and go to the actual web page for that item. Opera provides a quick and bandwidth-conserving way of scanning a lot of news items and articles very quickly. Opera Mini might be able to do this also for the mobile devices.
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
By downloading the Opera for Windows Mobile Pocket PC edition http://opera.com/products/mobile/products/winmobil eppc/
Note this is not the same as the mobile browser listed in the article... that one uses Java and will run on almost anything that uses Java. This one is actually an application written for the Pocket PC. I used the one that this slashdot article is talking about on my Palm Treo 600 (not for long tho, found it slow and too basic) For my new Axim x51v I use the Pocket PC version.
As for is this a reason to not buy a smartphone? Uhhhh No.
I've been using this for a whole week..(it was given to sprint users for Vision Phones from a link they provided on 1/13)
= 87456&highlight=opera+mini
http://www.sprintusers.com/forum/showthread.php?t
O-Mini seems to pass all comm through thier servers in real time. It slices most full window pages into 30 slices. It does the same on large, wider-then-tall images.
Actually I love it so far.. I just hope they keep it free...
Also check out Google Maps for mobile:
http://www.google.com/glm/index.html
And Orb (stream MUCHO from home computer):
http://www.orb.com/what_is_orb/
By default Opera identifies itself as "Internet Explorer" and some webmasters incorrectly use this information to determine which web browsers are more commonly used.
If you're a big fan of Opera, like we are (and it's already standard at some of the companies we regularly deal with too), you can actually cast an implied vote by setting the default to "Opera" in the settings:
1. "Tools" menu
2. "Preferences" item
3. "Advanced" tab
4. "Network" option (on the left-hand side)
5. "Browser identification" pull-down menu
And if you find a web site that lectures you on which web browser they think you should use, then send a friendly message to the sales department (don't bother the webmaster because given their attitude they'll probably just ignore you and not bother to let the sales people know) telling them that you were interested in their product but since you can use Opera to browse their web site that you'll just have to find the needed information somewhere else.
The Lumber Cartel, local 42 (Canadian branch)
British Columbia, Canada
If they obey the laws of Norway, being a Norwegian company, and/or if their proxy servers are hosted in Norway, then they are not allowed to keep any personal information and definetly not allowed to sell them on. Pretty sure police/court requests don't change that situation either.
What they do with anonymous data is not clear though.
However I doubt they use central servers, probably got some deal with google or us/global networks....
My other Sig is very funny.
Because AvantGo provides you some downloaded content that you can browse on your device at your leisure, and Opera Mini is a web browser, with which you can dynamically view content?
At least, that's all AvantGo did last time I used it (for Palm) and AFAICT from a super-quick glance over their website, it's all they do now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have been using Opera Mini on my Nokia 6230 for about a month now. It runs very quickly, much better than the built in browser on my particular phone. I have found only rare pages that don't work properly. I use HTML gmail, without a problem, and many other full sites work great. You can still look at the mobile versions of sites, and they work even more quickly than the mobile versions in the built-in browser. Supports cookies and SSL without a problem. It's great when you want to go to a site without argument of what your phone can and can not do.
It has a nice front page that helps you quickly return to sites you looked at in the last session, your top bookmarks, and jsut sites you'd like to see on the front page. It also has a very complete options menu, for the standard browser options.
Only one problem: it doesn't support the required technologies to properly support AJAX. It's becoming more and more necessary, and it's a shame that you can't use the dynamic gmail and dynamic custom Google front page. I'm sure they'll get it worked out soon. I'm not sure if it's the javascript, the XML, or the HTTPRequest object, but it just doesn't work. It may even be a DHTML issue.
Conclusion: Try this browser if you have a java phone, you'll love it.
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
I just finished installing Opera Mini on my Tungsten E2, and this is an amazingly fast browser. I've been using Blazer and there is just no comparison in performance.
The interface is minimalist and not entirely intuitive for a long time Palm user and at best it could be said to be a little errr... unpolished, but it is serviceable.
You can compare the performance between Opera and Google because they both offer WAP proxying and you can expect Opera's performance to be somewhat faster. Over all it's a sound app, and it works swimmingly on a humble E2 (despite the fact that they claim it isn't supported) so if you have a Lifedrive or Tx the performance should be outstanding.
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