Opera Mini 5 beta released

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A few days ago Opera released Opera Mini 5 beta for public testing. Opera Mini is the most popular mobile phone browser and differs from other browsers in the way it delivers content to you. All your web traffic will pass through Opera's servers (much like the Turbo feature in the desktop versions) which compresses the data to save data cost and make pages load faster on your phone. This enables you to view full websites in Opera Mini instead of having to visit special mobile versions.

New features in Opera Mini 5 beta include:

A completely new look and feel
Tabbed browsing
Better touchscreen and keypad support
Password Manager
Speed dial

Opera Mini is supported on most BlackBerry and Java-enabled phones.

A downside of their server-based protocol is that a lot of AJAX-based sites (like x.facebook.com) do not work properly, since javascript is only supported in a very limited way. It is slightly disappointing the rendering engine didn't get an update, and some annoying glitches from previous versions still exist. It is still a beta though and many things could change before the final release.

Still, Opera Mini is one of the few applications that is able to provide a very good application experience on a mobile Java platform, and is in most cases a lot better and faster than built-in browsers in most phones.

Feel free to download it to your phone and try it out! Opera Mini 5 beta can be installed side-by-side with older versions.

Download: visit m.opera.com/next on your mobile phone.

More information and screenshots on opera.com

News source: Tweakers.net

This is BETA software! Please be careful when installing and using it on your mobile phone.

#1 sirnh1 on 20 Sep 2009 - 11:18

I'm currently trying opera mini 5 on my nokia 3500. The application itself seems to work great and I love the tabbed browsing on my phone, the only real problem I have is that the new skin doesn't fit on the screen of my phone...

It is slightly disappointing the rendering engine didn't get an update

But they do have 'server upgrades'. Sometimes they upgrade a few things on the server that for example might improve site compatibility or implement things like "partial support for designMode/ contentEditable" (see: http://my.opera.com/operamini/blog/, and the server pre renders the pages for opera mini to display...).

#2 +petrossa on 20 Sep 2009 - 18:20

i installed it on my N9500 communicator. The thing died. Had to reset to factory defaults and reformat the drive to get it back. I guess i'll stick to 4.2 mini from now on

#3 GeeQ on 20 Sep 2009 - 19:06

it works on Samsung F480 but quite slow and the keyboard of the software is quite hard to use

#4 FiZi on 21 Sep 2009 - 01:59

Works on my Blackberry Bold. Still can't copy/paste into the address bar.

#5 protocol7 on 21 Sep 2009 - 18:35

I'm using Bolt lately and quite like it. Would like to see either it or Opera Mini support the accelerometer in my w705 though.

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