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Those of you who are eagerly waiting on Opera Mobile 10 to come to Android should check out the new Opera Mini 5 beta. Both browsers are based on the same core technology but in Opera Mini, the Opera Presto browser engine is located on a server. In Opera Mobile, it is installed on your phone. Opera is looking to partner with OEMs to include Opera Mobile 10 with their phones, so the Mini 5 could be some users only experience with Opera.
I tested out the latest Opera Mini 5 and the UI looks really clean and the rendering was off on several sites I visited. There are some cool extra features like Opera Link (which syncs booksmarks, speed dial, and search engines), but it is missing pinch zoom which I have become fond of.
The beta should work on all Android phones, so give it a test run and let us know what you think.
The major differences in Opera Mobile and Mini include:
- Opera Mobile will render web pages just like a desktop browser. In Opera Mini, there may be slight differences, and very complex Web pages may not work optimally.
- Opera Mini will generally be faster. It downloads less content and requires less CPU to render pages.
- Opera Mini works on almost any phone. Opera Mobile is only available for Windows Mobile, upcoming Android devices, and Symbian/S60 phones.
Top new features of Opera Mini 5 include:
- Tabbed browsing – Browse several Web sites at the same time, while easily jumping from one to another.
- Speed Dial – Get to your favorite Web page with just one click, with a set of visual bookmarks when you open a new tab.
- Opera Link – Synchronize your bookmarks and Speed Dial between your mobile phone and desktop computer.
- Download manager – Manage downloads right from the browser. Pause and resume downloads to suit your needs.
Comment RSS20 Comments
It’s actually a pretty nice browser. Definitely can notice the speed differences on my myTouch. This thing is blazing! Tabbing is done nicely and the Start Page is pretty attractive.
I immediately notice the lack of nice AJAXY/WEB2.0/HTML5 UIs for sites like Gmail, Google Reader, and even Android and Me. Makes sense because of them rendering the page on their servers.
Hmm…and leaving the app via the Home button to do some multitasking and coming back ditches all the tabs you had open. They should probably fix that one…kind of a pain.
I’ll definitely keep it on my phone, though. It will definitely come in handy when I need the quickest page loads possible. Nice unique product Opera.
I left the browser via home button with multiple pages open and went back in and it still had them. It would only eliminate them if you killed the browser via taskiller.
Why would it want to be able to use “Services that cost you money – directly call phone numbers” as a security permission?
I thought I was going to use it to surf the web, not call people.
The browser needs explicit permission to launch the dialer app for, say, when you click on a phone number in the browser.
The Opera creators might be well intentioned, but I can imagine a page with a link towards a really expensive phone number and, if possible, a switch focus command back to the browser window while the call is still active. Meow.
I say phone calls and browsers are different things and must be kept apart.
my only question is – why is everyone treating this like its real news? opera mini 5 has been available for a long time, but that version has been removed completely – comments and all – and replaced with this
i tested out opera way back when and i dont see any major improvement between what they gave is then and what we have now – just a new UI (better but not a proper ‘feature’ )
This is great seeing Opera (Desktop) as the fastest browser in the world and now this, landing on mobile.. I just wonder how this one matches on Firefox (Fennec on android?) Details: http://bit.ly/android-firefox-details
Great browser, runs fast and has great interface. Just needs bit more work but 5 stars cause its still great.
The only thing I didn’t like is that it would load the old google mobile and not the feature rich one you get with the default browser
No multi-touch, lack of support for CCS3 and HTML5, etc. Feels like a huge downgrade from the stock browser besides the UI
This is really a great browser and really loads up very fast. I love this one.
Facebook really looks like crap, but the tabbing is a lot more intuitive than it is on the default browser. Nice to see the “big names” in browsers stepping up to Android.
Also, Youtube looks pretty hurting.
I’m still enjoying dolphin browser on the mytouch.
Well I tried it and wasn’t all that impressed. It is faster than the the stock browser that comes with 1.6 as far as loading pages, but web pages i visited would not fully render and the buttons at the bottom of the screen take up screen space when viewing in landscape view. For now back to the stock android browser.
Change to “full screen” in the settings and the buttons disappear.
This is great that Opera mini comes for Android.., apart from the fact that the address bar is always showing, but I like it.