Opera releases Mini browser beta for Android

(Credit: Opera Software)

In a move to expand its franchise to a higher-end frontier of the mobile phone market, Opera Software has released a beta version of Opera Mini 5 for Android.

Opera's Mini and more feature-rich Mobile browsers are widely used in the mobile phone market, but the company faces a challenge in new smartphones using Apple's iPhone OS, Google's Android operating system, and Palm's WebOS. Those come with their own browser installed already, in those cases based on the WebKit browser project.

Mini is designed to work on less-capable phones with smaller screens, slower network connections, and less-sophisticated user interface abilities. Version 5 offers support for features including Speed Dial, which is a grid of favorite Web pages, compression through Opera's servers to speed download of Web pages that aren't tailored for mobile phones, and tabbed browsing.

The Norwegian company had released an earlier version of Mini for Android, starting with a technical preview in April 2008 and culminating in Opera Mini 4.2 for Android in January. It's also working on a version of Opera Mobile for Android.

[drksilenc]

skip the mini these arnt cheep phones and take the time to develop your full browser and skip the lightweight

[Ebraheem]

The main advantage of the mini version is speed. Opera's servers retrieve the pages, execute JavaScript (within some limits,) compresses them, and sends them to the phone. This reduces bandwidth by a big margin, which might be useful when 3G doesn't work and you're stuck with EDGE

[madtwnjen]

I'm excited to finally get the new UI on my Hero, thanks Opera!

[tbar2112]

After a few hours of testing it on my Nexus One, I have to say that the browser overall works great (there's always room for improvement). Much better & faster than the built-in browser and I know from previous experience that it cuts my data bill significantly. Very nice, Opera!

[BAMAToNE]

A definite improvement over 4.2, but still missing the "share page" option.

[queticomn]

Don't know why c|net just cant compliment somthing for what it is with out having to bring up others. So since c|net did i will too.

Carakan has already proven itself to be the fastest java script engine available, who cares of webkit!

The big news in Opera 10.50 is the new JavaScript engine, Carakan, that makes Opera arguably the fastest browser around. CNET editors' review

http://download.cnet.com/Opera/3000-2356_4-10005498.html?tag=mncol

Opera 10.x is the surprising no. 1 choice in terms of users preferences as the Best Major Desktop Browser in a survey performed by About.com at the start of this year. Over 50,000 people voted in the Reader's Choice Awards on a variety of topics including Best Major Desktop Browser, Best Mobile Browser, Best Overall Add-On (Non Security), Best Privacy/Security Add-On, Best Independent Browser, Best Browser Theme, and Best User Script. No less than 25,000 votes were casted in order to determine the winner in the Best Major Desktop Browser.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Opera-10-Gets-Best-2010-Browser-Pick-over-Firefox-Chrome-and-IE8-136532.shtml

[gerrrg]

You know, I don't like three things:

1. Permanent buttons and address / search bar taking up real estate on my screen;
2. Web page navigation can sometimes be a real pain - scroll button moves a mini pointer instead of moving between selectable assets like URLs;
3. Presentation of web pages is not nearly as refined as with Google's native browser. Small text is made even smaller (by default) and in fact, Opera reformats pages into its own style, which makes some things just look odd.

But I do like three things:

1. Same quick launch screen from startup as the regular Opera browser allowing you to quickly select your favorite web pages;
2. FAST!
3. Super easy to navigate to changes of options / settings.

[yeshuawatso]

Well it's about damn time they updated that POS that is Opera Mini 4. Don't get me wrong, Opera Mini 4 was fast, but just too many bugs. But what do you expect? Opera told us it was just a lazy port of the j2me version.

[indiemixer]

YES! FINALLY!