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."

Not as such....

[Art Popp]

"...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.

An idea for Opera users...

[lumbercartel.ca]

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.

Re:Bring out yer flamebait mods.....

[flurdy]

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....

Re:Bring out yer flamebait mods.....

[Mostly a lurker]

Remember Opera is based in Scandinavia. DOJ has no direct leverage on them. Also, in Scandinavia, privacy laws are taken seriously and must be obeyed by governments as well as corporations.