Opera Mobile 9.7 beta lands
Opera released the beta version of its latest Windows-only mobile browser yesterday. The Norwegian browser maker said new features in Opera Mobile 9.7 include faster surfing using the firm’s Opera Turbo technology. Opera claimed data transfer was up to 25 per cent faster compared to older versions of the software. The latest …
Open source? I wish.... so someone could fix the dozens of bugs they don't care to fix. They keep bloating their mobile browser so that they have something to announce each year in Barcelona and some other places where they try to entice phone OEMs and network operators.
But if you try something and it doesn't work you are better off just installing the whole thing because there is no chance in heaven that they will correct it.
If you go to the Opera website forums you will see what I mean. Apart from a couple of mindless trolls who try to defend Opera without any sensible reason, the forums are an endless list of unanswered cries....
"The Norwegian open source browser maker said new features in Opera Mobile 9.7 include faster surfing using the firm’s Opera Turbo technology."
Opera is open source? Did I miss the memo on that one?
Tried it on my Touch HD. Laggy performance, takes over a second to respond to interactions, leaving you feeling that it might not have noticed. Turbo feature seems to randomly miss out part of the data, often images, but also text.
Will be ace if they can make it work, but currently unusable, I'll go back to Opera Mini.
YMMV
You have a better suggestion? Of the mobile browsers I've tried, Opera is by far the best.
Just installed it on my Athena and it seems great so far. Exactly the same interface as 9.5 with the odd enhancement (read: pointless alpha blends and zoomy bits), but it chuffin' FLIES. The speed difference is definitely noticeable. It starts faster, it renders faster, and there's far less lag when using multiple tabs. I like it.
WARNING FOR UPGRADERS: The browser offers to remove your old installation when installing, which given the limited program space on your device, you'll probably want to do. However, it doesn't import the settings from your old installation, so make sure your bookmarks, etc are backed up before doing this, or you'll lose them.
I like it; works great on my Axim's VGA display and the tap&swipe control system works a treat. WAY better than PIE.
However, although I have Flash Mobile and it's javascript enabled, couldn't stream YouTube vids; either get an 'out of memory' error or if simply shuts down.
So far the Omnia version of Opera Mobile has been a long way in advance of the previous official betas, particularly for VGA devices, that's what I'm running on my iPAQ 214. From the looks of things they've now put some of those features into this official beta, which is nice if that's the case. The notes say nothing about any improved Flash support, so I guess we'll still have to use the same plugin that works with the Omnia build, if anything, so still no BBC iPlayer etc, but I could be wrong. I'll be interested to see if the speed improvements are noticeable, zooming and scrolling while a page is still loading are, at the moment, painful.
I don't doubt that this particular version may well only exist for Windows - I haven't checked. But the browser is offered for, among other platforms, linux (well, for linux users who care about functionality more than philosophy, anyway). So I'm not sure I'd describe this as "Windows only" in any sense I'd understand... maybe that should be reworded a bit?
I am not saying Opera Mobile is a shitty browser. My concern is they just never fix whatever problem you find in their software. If you change your usage pattern to work around the bugs then you will be happy. If you want bugs fixed then just uninstall because there is no chance.
