Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
I'm testing it right now and it doesn't seem to have any feed integration.
Then again, the Advanced version i'm using is only 100kb, and it's stunningly fast, good looking and readable (even with the fonts set to minimum size) so I really doubt they could include an RSS reader to boot.
Just use bloglines or that kind of stuff and put your RSS on the web
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
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.'"