Opera Mobile 9.7 beta gets Turbo

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Opera has released the beta of Opera Mobile 9.7 for Windows Mobile, bringing with it the company's much-touted Turbo mode.

Turbo mode speeds up mobile browsing by pre-compressing web pages on Opera's servers before delivering them to the user's handset.

Turbo mode is aimed at users on slower connections, such as Edge, and Opera claims it could help speed up browsing by as much as 80 per cent on content-rich pages, though predictably image quality suffers. The browser is also still lacking support for Flash.

The other big change from Opera Mobile 9.5 to the 9.7 beta is a new widgets gallery. Previously, the widgets gallery was featured as part of the browser, however it is now offered as a standalone download and has been overhauled with a new interface and manager.

When asked why Opera had chosen to separate the widgets gallery from the browser, a spokesperson informed said it was to prevent users losing both the browser and gallery should either crash. The company also claimed that widgets have now become popular enough to warrant a separate app.

The company said it's currently working on a version of the widgets gallery for Symbian S60 smartphones.

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