Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta Released

[Darius Wey]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/download/' target='_blank'>http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/download/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Opera brings you the best Internet experience on any device, from computers and cell phones to portable media players and game consoles. Opera Mobile, first launched in 2000, and with over 100 million installations since 2004, was the first to bring the full Web to the small mobile screen. Opera Mobile for feature phones and smartphones has pioneered and set the standard in mobile browsing, supporting the latest technologies and receiving industry acclaim. Today, Opera continues to provide the best mobile Web experience with the first beta of Opera Mobile 9.5. Opera Mobile is the answer to the demands of Web fans everywhere. The first beta of Opera Mobile 9.5 comes outfitted with added performance, faster speed, a new UI, and Oper Dragonfly, and is ready and waiting to bring users the Web everywhere."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/spt/auto/1216286464.usr2.jpg" border="1" /></p><p>It's finally here! The public beta of Opera Mobile 9.5 is <a href="http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/download/" target="_blank">now available</a> for Windows Mobile Classic/Professional (Pocket PC) devices (sorry, Standard (Smartphone) users). There are plenty of <a href="http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/features/" target="_blank">new features</a> such as pan and zoom, a new UI, improved performance, improved standards support, AJAX support, tabbed browsing, offline browsing, auto-complete, a password manager, and Opera Dragonfly. Of course, 9.5 is not without its issues - be sure to <a href="http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/download/" target="_blank">digest them</a> before installing. Happy browsing!</p>

[joker]

If this is really not for WM2003SE then a big FU! goes out to the lame Opera folks.
Also read the Pocket PC Magazine Blog with Werner's reply to my rant about this matter.

FU Opera!

[jngold_me]

If this is really not for WM2003SE then a big FU! goes out to the lame Opera folks.
Also read the Pocket PC Magazine Blog with Werner's reply to my rant about this matter.

FU Opera!

WM2003SE? Sorry to say, you need to get a new device. WM2003 is already 3 versions old.

[Jason Lee]

*blinks* *rubs eyes* *checks year on calendar* is it real...?

[Phillip Dyson]

I don't know...
I was pretty excited about this browser for some time.

I installed it on my Touch Dual, and went to google.com
No matter how I fiddled with the display settings: Mobile View, full screen, font sizes... And I can't see how this is a good usable experience. I always have to drag the view around to get to the search field. That to me is a step backwards. At least with the mobile version of the site, its right there. Simple. I'll try some more complex sites.

Also, does anyone know if Opera always pulls in the IE favorites at start up, or is it just a one time deal. I really prefer the way Netfront literally operates on the PIE favorites. Both reading and writing.

[joker]

Best is to only edit your IE favorites and then in Opera go to your bookmarks and do a new import.

Did I already say?: FU Opera!

[JwY]

Huge problem for me where on exit, it deletes my notification settings (ie. notification setting for text mesages).

[MAK11]

Huge problem for me where on exit, it deletes my notification settings (ie. notification setting for text mesages).
Yup same problem for me..

[buzzard]

Yup same problem for me..

Same here. No more reminder sounds because it unchecks the box.

It also skipped over a few PIE websites when it copied them over.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah pretty rough beta considering the leaked version that i was playing with worked much better. Slower but bot stable and didn't destroy my phone. :)

Absolutely every option in the notification setting gets disabled.

I miss the ability to manually import IE contacts when ever i want to.

I miss the ability to set the browser to identifiy as a handheld or a desktop. This option is a must have. Sometimes i just want to see the mobile site because it is way faster and gives me exactly the info i need.

[MarcTGFG]

Type opera:config in the adress bar and far down in the advanced section you can change vrowser identification I believe, just like gazillions of other options.

[Doug Raeburn]

I miss the ability to set the browser to identifiy as a handheld or a desktop. This option is a must have. Sometimes i just want to see the mobile site because it is way faster and gives me exactly the info i need.

Try Settings:Display:Mobile view

That should give you what you're looking for.

[Craig Horlacher]

I can't believe all the negative comments!!! I have an iMate Ultimate 6150 and this browser is awesome! Great rendering, fast, most usable Pocket PC browser I've ever used by a long shot - and I've tried many.

Double tap to zoom on a column, double-tap to zoom back out. The menus are designed for fingers, it switches to full-screen and back automatically at the perfect times.

I don't know what you people are talking about. It's great here! Thank you Opera people!!!

For any us you who saw Safari on an iPhone and wanted that for your Windows Mobile device this is it!!!

[schmenge]

Try Settings:Display:Mobile view

That should give you what you're looking for.

This gives you a different view (no zoom needed), but does not ID your device as a mobile for sites with a mobile config. At least as far as I can tell.

[jngold_me]

I can't believe all the negative comments!!! I have an iMate Ultimate 6150 and this browser is awesome!

***long quote trimmed by mod JD***

Maybe because many of us have been using the leaked HTC versions, which BTW have been very stable. They may be a bit slower than the current beta, but they certainly haven't caused as many problems as been reported with the latest beta.

[Doug Raeburn]

This gives you a different view (no zoom needed), but does not ID your device as a mobile for sites with a mobile config. At least as far as I can tell.

Worked fine for me... I tried it on both PPCT and msnbc.com and both came up in their mobile view.

[joker]

post edited by Rocco for excessive flamming.


Thanks for editing, err, I mean censoring my post!

But.. isn't my question, whether Opera guys can actually program or if they are only an ignorant bunch, an absolutely valid question?

And my second statement about the HTC deal is also perfectly valid.
WE ALL know that many companies become lazy once they had their big deal involving a lot of money.
Exactly the same seems to be the case with Opera now.

That also was the case with HTC btw.


People talking about Google being evil? BAH! Look at companies like HTC and Opera and finally open your eyes!



If you are going to say now that rants like mine are not needed then I have to say something to you:

People like ME have to publish such rants, else companies like THEM will always continue to rip off people like YOU!

Think about it, and get active.

[Jason Lee]

Worked fine for me... I tried it on both PPCT and msnbc.com and both came up in their mobile view.

hmm. Doesn't work for me. :(
Putting it in "mobile view" does the exact same thing as the "fit to screen" option in opera 8. I think it would be great if setting the mobile view option set it to fit to screen and changed the browser string but that doesn't seem to be what it is doing for me. I canot get the mobile version of sights. :(

[cirrob121]

I can't believe all the negative comments!!! I have an iMate Ultimate 6150 and this browser is awesome!

***long quote trimmed by mod JD***

What do you mean you cant beleive all the complaints? If the device you purchased to keep your schedule no longer keeps your schedule (reminders silent) because of a flawed program, than everything else is irelevant. Its a show stopper for everyone who actually use their devices for productivity. They cant possibly expect anyone to continue beta testing it until they fix that alone...it renders a ppc to a simple paper and pencile planner. Sure it looks cool, has nice features etc. But I need those alarms when I have a hundred tasks and half as many appointments to keep.

The other issues such as resources are huge too, but not even on the same plane as destroying notifications.

Ive submitted my bug and uninstalled the program. I like the browser concept so I have set a REMINDER to check back with them in a week for a fixed beta so I can help them on the bug hunt. At least I can rely on that reminder to to prompt an action on my part

[Doug Raeburn]

hmm. Doesn't work for me. :(
Putting it in "mobile view" does the exact same thing as the "fit to screen" option in opera 8. I think it would be great if setting the mobile view option set it to fit to screen and changed the browser string but that doesn't seem to be what it is doing for me. I canot get the mobile version of sights. :(

My bad... the way the browser changed the formatting in Mobile view, it looked to me like the actual mobile version. But I compared it to my Smartphone and realized that it was just displaying a reformatted standard page on the Pocket PC.

Sorry about that...

[Craig Horlacher]

What do you mean you cant beleive all the complaints?

***long quote trimmed by mod JD***

My browser use on the ppc has always been that I open the browser to look something up, check news, weather, or a post on a site. When I'm done, I exit, not minimize, the browser. This was really a pain with pie and I think mozilla for ppc as well using either ctrl-q or a task killer. I never wanted it open with other things though because browsers are such hogs. I guess I'm just not concerned about missing appointments because of it since it's extremely rare that I use my ppc browser at work and at work is when most of my alarms are set to go off.

I'm just stoked to have a useful browser that renders pages very well and, I think, is very easy to navigate!!! To me, this is a first! I've tried the one from Access, Mozilla for ppc, and I think a few others but nothing is close. I'm finally happy with my pocket pc browser. It was driving me nuts when iphones had a browser that was so much better. It's not just look and feel thing, it's more usable or not.

[landswipe]

Not bad Opera team. Definitely a step ahead of IEMobile. You guys definitely get the "finger-centric UI".

I still find it clunky though, resistive screens just don't play well with gesture scrolling.

I'm running it on a 624Mhz HP4700 with an illegitimate 6.1 build, so maybe that has something to do with the clunkyness.

All up I am very impressed with the beta... But to be honest, WM7's IEMobile is going to need this plus an overall 25% improvement to put a dampener on the iphone juggernaut. Apple nailed that browser first go.

[cgavula]

Although it's interesting and has some nice features, I have to agree with some of the other posters. This version is not ready for prime time.

It's very unstable and when I click on things, there is a MANY second lag before anything happens, including when you try to pop up the menu. That tripped me up a few times before I figured out what was happening.

The rendering is definitely much better than PIE, but the program needs to go through a little more testing and revision and testing and improvement before I can make it a daily driver.

Despite what some have said, I don't feel it holds a candle to Safari on the iPhone - yet. Safari is a much smoother and consistently pleasant experience today. Opera Mobile has a lot of promise, but still needs to clean up a bit. Great step in the right direction, but not quite there yet.

[MarcTGFG]

Although it's interesting and has some nice features, I have to agree with some of the other posters. This version is not ready for prime time.

***long quote trimmed by mod JD***

The rendering is light years better as are the loading times for most websites. Just use the build 1522 at xda-developers.com and you dont have any notification problems or excessive memory hickups. It also has a nicer skin.

Its pretty stable for a pre-beta-version too. No flash here too, sadly.

[Jason Dunn]

post edited by Rocco for excessive flamming. Thanks for editing, err, I mean censoring my post!

I don't know what your original post said, but I'd encourage you to tone down your comments. It's certain possible to express anger and frustration with a company without dropping "FU's" everywhere. You may have noticed our forums are quite friendly - please try to match the tone of the others here and you'll find your posts won't need editing. ;)

[joker]

You are right, Jason. Those "FU"s were unnecessary. Sorry to everyone who is feeling disgusted by that.

[cirrob121]

***long quote trimmed by mod JD***

I'm just stoked to have a useful browser that renders pages very well and, I think, is very easy to navigate!!! To me, this is a first! I've tried the one from Access, Mozilla for ppc, and I think a few others but nothing is close. I'm finally happy with my pocket pc browser. It was driving me nuts when iphones had a browser that was so much better. It's not just look and feel thing, it's more usable or not.

Granted, it has potential. It looks awsome, and its features are very useful for browsing the internet on limited screensize. However, my pda is a productivity tool first, and a toy second. With that said, alarms (at any time of the day, all day) are indespencible. I imagine that is the case for most people who own a PDA in any form (smart phone or not). Which means, they need to fix it if they truely want the rest of it put through the numbers. Another thing to think on is the size. Not everyone upgrades their PDA when something new hits the market. There are more users out there with limited ram space than those with bleeding edge units with twice the space. This program is a hog as it currently stands. I will still test it with its current footprint howerver...ONCE I get my alarms back :) BUt thats something they should consider.

The last item of contention (though not that big to me...but still an anoyance) is the lag between a tap and an action. Previous versions and other browsers show an instant reaction. We have grown use to it and opera needs to mimic it...no questions, just do it.

[wmm]

There is a lot to like about the new Opera Mobile. It's really attractive and stylish. I particularly like the zoom animation, where they blow up each pixel in the overview to the size it will occupy in the zoomed-in view and then replace the heavily-pixelated image with the high-resolution version, and the automatic full-screen mode is great, too.

Running it side-by-side with the Skyfire beta makes for an interesting comparison. For relatively simple text-based web sites, like pocketpcthoughts.com, the experience is very similar: you start out with a zoomed-out view of the page, then double-tap on an area of interest to zoom in and read. Both format columns of text so that it will exactly fill the screen width in the zoomed-in view, and both do it very well. The principal difference here is performance: with Opera, the entire page is sent to the phone and rendered on the device, which means that getting to the initial view can take a long time. Once it's there, however, everything is right on the phone, so zooming in and out and panning around happen immediately. With Skyfire, the page fetch and rendering occurs on the remote server, with only a portion of the page, and only the zoomed-out version of that portion, being transferred and displayed on the phone, which makes it much faster to get to the initial view. Zooming in and out and panning more than a small distance, however, has to hit the server again for a refresh, so that is somewhat slower than with Opera.

At the moment, Skyfire has the edge in the kinds of sites it supports; ActiveX (notably Flash) is not supported in the current Opera Mobile beta. Combining that with the performance issues and the other problems in the current beta, I'm going to continue for the time being to use Skyfire as my browser of choice except for banking sites and such where I want to keep my passwords on my phone and not on a third-part server. I wonder about the practicality of running a full-featured browser all on a phone, though. Admittedly, I'm using a pretty limited device (Cingular 8525, with only 64 MB of memory and a slow processor), so it will be interesting for me to see how Opera Mobile performs in a production build on a more capable device (assuming that AT&T picks up one or more of the new SE, HTC, or Samsung devices so that I can afford to upgrade). However, assuming Skyfire can develop a viable business model, I think their approach is more scalable and should offer better performance and capabilities for at least the medium term (until we get really fast processors and high wireless bandwidth).