Opera releases beta version of new WebKit-powered Android browser


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Opera releases beta version of new WebKit-powered Android browser

A week after we first saw Opera's new Android browser at Mobile World Congress, a beta version has appeared in the Google Play Store. It's a significant product for Opera in that it uses the WebKit rendering engine rather than the company's proprietary Presto; as such, it should look and feel very similar to Google's own Chrome in regular use. The interface looks identical to the "very early" preview we saw in Barcelona, and isn't too far removed from Chrome itself. We didn't expect to see a public release this soon, so there may well be stability issues with this version of Opera ? if you're curious, however, you can download it for yourself at the link below.

Source: The Verge

Download: Opera browser beta (Google Play Store link)

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Just downloaded it, Using it to Send this post :p works alright..missing a lot of features, But that's to be expected lol will use it as my default for a bit to see how it does

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Over the existing version of Opera on Android - much cleaner / slicker interface, the old black gradients looked crap. Liking the minimal interface on nexus 7 - no space wasted on tabs...

As a browser goes, it's pretty basic and is similar to Chrome - ie lacks many features / settings but at least speed dial is there, lack of a back button is odd though :p

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Oh, and for those of you happening to wonder what the user-agent is, here is an example (well, mine)

mozilla/5.0 (linux; android 4.0.4; lg-p500 build/gri40) applewebkit/537.22 (khtml, like gecko) chrome/25.0.1364.123 mobile safari/537.22 opr/14.0.1025.52315

Looks like Opera now has long version numbers now...And looks like they might be skipping version 13? lol Opera Mobile is 12.10, this is 14.0

Loads a little faster than Presto Opera Mobile does..

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I might check this out on my nexus 7 later, the interface looked very very slick in the video and the speeddial looks much better than chrome mobile's new tab page. (i've also been having a ton of issues with google sync on my nexus lately, it takes like 5 minutes to load the bookmarks on the new tab page, its ridiculous... I've been using firefox in the meantime but it has issues with some sites, such as the neowin forums)

I might use the desktop browser when that comes out too if they bring over the awesome speed dial and smooth scrolling from the current opera, those are currently my two biggest issues with chrome.

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Just got around to trying it on my nexus 7, I'm actually really liking it so far. its interface is a lot better than chrome's and I've yet to have problems with any websites, think it may be my new default browser there.

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