 Tonight
I had my first 15 minutes with the recently announced but not yet released Opera
Mobile 9.5 web browser on a Windows Mobile 6 Professional smartphone. As Opera
confirmed, we will see a release of this browser later this year - most likely
in Spring (even if the Opera Software spokesman mentioned that Spring is coming
later to Oslo). He also confirmed that Opera Mobile 9, which was announced on
last year's 3GSM World Congress was never released for Windows Mobile but the PC
development kept Opera that busy that it was postponed to Opera Mobile 9.5.
Nevertheless, Opera 9 for PC and Opera Mobile 9.5 now shares the identical code
base.
As you can see bellow, the current build is working pretty fast, even if
Opera told me that this is an internal development build only and still far away
from the final version. Nevertheless, it's quite promising (even if the device
was working on GPRS only, not UMTS but this gives you an even better impression
how fast the browser is):
I've also spoken with Opera Software about Opera Mini and unlike Opera Mini,
Opera Mobile is again not using a proxy server in between. The reason why Opera
isn't using a proxy server for Opera Mobile is, that the company see some
problems with user interaction on Opera Mini, especially with drop-down menus,
etc. and since Opera Mini was designed for lower CPU platforms, Opera Software
sees no reason to provide a reduced user experience on powerful devices.
While Opera Software hasn't named any partners, it was said that we will see
Opera Mobile 9.5 preinstalled on smartphones as well (like Opera 8.65 is
preinstalled on the Motorola Q9h already).
A consumer price wasn't announced today but will be unveiled with the release of
Opera Mobile 9.5 which will be released - most likely - as a public Beta first.
Cheers ~ Arne
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