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Opera Mini, my new love!

By Arron Johnson in Reader

Posted in Opera, Internet Explorer, Internet, O2 on January 10, 2008 at 12:26 am

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Those of you who read my blog regularly , you’ll know that not so long ago I started using the Opera web browser, well for a few weeks now I’ve also been using Opera Mini…

If you missed me raving about Opera before (where were you?) you can catch up here http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/arronj/2007/11/26/opera-i-love-it/

Opera mini is the free web browser for mobile phones from Opera. They do offer another package called Opera mobile, but it isn’t free, and regular readers will know, I am of the philosophy that the best things in life are free!

I have an o2 xda with Windows Mobile 6. It comes with Internet explorer bundled (But despite what the courts say, this doesn’t stop me from using other browsers! ), which is ok but I wouldn’t rave about it! Opera Mini on the other hand I will rave about, and in case you haven’t noticed… I am!

Seeing as o2 won’t give me unlimited data usage on my contract becuase I don’t have an Iphone, see http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/arronj/2007/11/06/i-want-unlimited-data-usage-but-i-dont-want-an-iphone/ I am having to watch the amount of data I transfer. This was the main reason I went to Opera Mini, due to its claims of needing to transfering less data to browse web pages. For example they claim to load the BBC webpage using just 40kb compared to the usual 270kb. It does this by compressing the data before sending it.
There are all sorts of other clever features like, resizing the page for your phone (something IE doesn’t do very well), scroll using the number pad, or if you have a touch screen you can ‘grab’ the page with the stylus and move it, create custom searches for your favorite websites, sync with Opera desktop, and more!

And at a total of 97kb its very quick and easy to install (you can even do it directly from your phone) just go to http://www.operamini.com/download/ or if you just want to take a look go to the hopefully quiet obvious http://www.operamini.com/

 If anyone does actually start using this I really would like to hear what you think! I’d especially like to know what it’s like without a touch screen.

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Comments

Comment by Daniel Goldman - January 10, 2008 on 4:19 pm

It’s great to hear that you’re using Opera for all of your browsing — on your computer, mobile phone, and on the Wii. That’s what I call ‘an Opera-powered day’ :)

Daniel
Opera Software

Comment by gideon - January 15, 2008 on 7:55 am

I also use Opera Mini extensively, also as it is quicker on some of the slower networks here in South Africa. My Nokia N70’s built-in browser was a bit useless, Opera Mini’s on-the-fly reformatting to suit the screen without lots of horizontal scrolling makes it extremely useful.

Comment by Andy Rawlins - January 20, 2008 on 11:47 am

I’ve just stuck it on my Nokia N95 and it seems great. The browser the phone comes with is good - I particularly like the function that allows you to see an overview of the whole page and then zoom in on the bit you want. However, Operamini gives you the whole page by default and you just click to zoom onto the part you want - which is more logical. The back button operates very quickly too.

On, for instance, the BBC homepage, the default Nokia browser goes first to the mobile version of the page - which is not that nice. If you choose to go to the full version, it loads very slowly. Operamini, on the other hand goes straight to the full version and loads very quickly. Thee doesn’t seem to be any zoom option. The Nokia browser goes to 125% and, I believe, you can zoom on the iPhone as much as you like. Neither seems to support Flash plus ins.

I suspect that I’ll be using Operamini from now on. Thanks for bringig it to my attention :)

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