4 replies to this topic

[deadphill]

Opera have just released a new version of their mobile browser, Opera 9.7.

As the title suggests its in beta at the moment, however one point of interest should be that this now comes with a widget application which will run apps off your phone for you. Sounds like this is the way the big players in the WM market are going now, when I posted the news about Kinoma Play

This new version is using Opera's turbo browser engine which compresses your data and saves on any potential data costs.

Ive only given it a breif whirl, but it does seem pretty fast. Follow the link to download

We would really like to know what you think, so don't forget to leave your comments!

Cheers

Phill

[Via: Coolsmartphone]

[Leggy]

This version seems to be a little quicker to respond to menu presses that 9.5.  Other than that, the big changes...

TURBO MODE:
----------------
Turbo mode is indeed very fast... particularly when you browse to heavy web pages (sometimes feels 5 maybe 10 times faster). Pages format OK to.

However, if you have a high-res screen on your Windows Mobile (I'm a Touch Diamond user), fonts look pretty small, even after zooming to the max.  And changing the Minimum Font Size in Settings > Display, or via Opera:Config > User Prefs, makes no difference.  The current Turbo offering makes the resolution very small, so the font is too small to be practical to read long articles, etc. without getting eye strain.

I wonder if the proxy server is squashing pages just a bit too much? Perhaps this is what folks with limited data packages / PAYG data packages want?  However, for those of us who would like to be able to comfortably read web content and either have unlimited data or don't mind the compromise, it would be nice to have the option of a compromise between the current heavily compressed Turbo mode and non-Turbo.  In practical terms, I'm thinking of a second proxy server, compressing data a little less than currently, offered via a second user-friendly radio button option under Settings > Advanced ("Turbo mode - enhanced graphics"), or something along those lines.  What do you reckon?

WIDGETS:
-----------
I'm not already a widget user. My experience of Opera's previous offerings was a little disappointing. Slow, not many widgets to chose from, show-up on screen in very small size. This time the front end is much better laid-out. However, apart from the default widgets that come with it, others I've tried seem to occupy only a small part of the screen and are therefore difficult to view and use... am I missing something here? (e.g. 25 squares widget).  Anyway, not a biggie for me as I'm only really after the browser function.

Most interested to hear what people make of the Turbo mode... :-)

Chris

Edited by Leggy, 09 June 2009 - 12:13 PM.

[Hurgle Durgle]

It definitely delivers in the rendering speed (onscreen rendering, not page rendering, though that's not too shabby either) department on my Xperia, but it still suffers from bizarre rendering issues like word wrap in desktop mode.

It's also the only app I have that, for some reason, if I start typing in a box too fast, it'll jump to the beginning of the line in the middle of what I'm typing.

Example:

I'm typing "www.google.com"

It jumps to the beginning of the line after www or somewhere early, and I get ".google.comwww"

Edited by Hurgle Durgle, 09 June 2009 - 02:02 PM.

[timeline]

How does this work, the

Opera Mobile — Stable version = 8.65

Then ther's
<h3 class="newbeta">Opera Mobile 9.7b1</h3>
So where are the stable 9.0 til 9.6 versions?

[moo_ski_doo]

timeline, on Jun 11 2009, 07:31, said:

How does this work, the

Opera Mobile — Stable version = 8.65

Then ther's
<h3 class="newbeta">Opera Mobile 9.7b1</h3>
So where are the stable 9.0 til 9.6 versions?

I though that was a bit odd too!

Also, does anyone know if it's possible to make touchflo launch this version of opera instead of the one included on the ROM when you choose 'Browser' from the internet tab?