Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 2 Adds Widgets

[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 Mobile 9.5 now introduces Opera Widgets to the mobile Internet experience, enabling one-click Web content access. This release marks the second Opera Mobile 9.5 beta for Windows Mobile and the first-ever beta for UIQ-based phones. A developer version of S60 Widget manager is also available within the Opera Widgets SDK... Several Opera Widgets are now pre-installed in the Opera Mobile 9.5 beta builds. Additionally, Opera offers downloadable widgets at widgets.opera.com. Opera always encourages more user-generated widgets and therefore recently updated its Opera Widget Software Development Kit (SDK). This SDK will enable developers to quickly and easily create widgets using standards-based Web technology. The Opera Widgets SDK now includes two new features: Opera Dragonfly debugging tool, Widget manager for on-device testing."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/spt/auto/1216286464.usr2.jpg" border="1" /></p><p>It's been three months since the <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/news/show/89953/opera-mobile-9-5-beta-released.html" target="_blank">first beta of Opera Mobile 9.5 surfaced</a>. Now you get to play with a <a href="http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/download/" target="_blank">new one</a>. Beta 2 adds widgets, along with the usual bug fixes and tweaks but, unfortunately, still no Smartphone (Standard) support.</p><p>If you're a developer, take a look at the updated Widget SDK and the "X Widget Challenge" for a chance to snag a portion of the $10,000 up for grabs.</p>

[dma1965]

I really like this build, and the widgets are great. It definitely has some great rendering.

However, I have yet to find a browser that can beat Netfront for rendering speed, especially for when I am using Newsbreak to read RSS feeds and click on the "Read more online" link to get the full story. In Netfront, sites like ABC news render almost instantly and I can start reading the text. In any other browser I constantly have to wait for all the grapics and crap to load just so I can scroll to the story. Opera 8.x had a great Jump to Main Content setting that worked well for this, but it had other quirks I hated dealing with. I am hoping the next version of Netfront comes out soon. So far it is my favorite mobile browsing experience, except for the fact that it does not handle media links (like PocketIE does).

[webbahboy]

I like the looks of what I see on Opera, but I can't seem to get out of the front gate with it.

I have installed both betas of 9.5 on my Axim, but I frequently get the message "Out of Memory. Close extra tabs to free up space". This happens when I am only on one page -- no additional tabs! Is anyone else getting this message on an Axim x51v?

[Jason Lee]

Both betas have been pretty horrible on both of my devices. Lots of out of memory errors. What is really sad is if you go over to xda developers and download a version ripped from one of the new HTC roms it runs perfectly fine. Makes you wonder why the betas are in such sad states.

[alese]

I actually like betas better than "official" builds from XDA-developers and/or HTC ROMs.
For instance - I use my iGoogle page a lot - it's my "gateway" to the net and on betas it displays without any problems on my HTC Advantage, but on my new HTC Diamond with official ROM and Opera 3 out of 5 gadgets don't display.

The only really annoying thing with betas was the out of memory message, but it looks that this is related to 64MB devices - I got it a lot on my old HTC Trinity, but on 128MB devices it doesn't happen.

[taiter]

I have to say i'm a touch disapointed with the new beta build. It still has issues with alternative soft keyboards, doesn't have the slider from the diamond build found in various forum sites and still appears buggy. What i do like about the new beta is that when i unistalled it it fixed the browser link issue within messaging that i'd been battling with since unistalling the last beta. I am eagerly awaiting a version that fixes these issues because i find the rendering to be quite acceptable (no issues loading up the local weather radar loop). So personally i wasn't happy with this release, though I probably won't be happy until its a comercial release.

[buzzard]

In the past Netfront beta's always were faster than the final version when they add in all of the stuff left out of the beta. Hopefully it won't be any slower when (if) they finally launch the full version.

[wmm]

Personally, I still like Skyfire better than Opera -- it's much faster to render the page on the server and then just send the relevant bits at the appropriate resolution than to send the whole page, graphics and all, and then render on these underpowered CPUs that cell phones still have these days. Opera is "prettier," but when I want information, Skyfire is more practical. (I don't know how Skyfire compares with Netfront.)