We’re not huge fans of the Opera Mini browser, to be honest. Mobile phone browsers need fewer options on them not more in OUR HUMBLE OPINION – but lots of people clearly do like the thing. Because Opera has launched version 5.1 on the Android Market today.
Here’s a quick look at it, in operation on our HTC Magic literally a few minutes ago.
We’re still not fans of its page rendering or zooming system. Plus it all seems a bit needlessly complex when a perfectly functional browser is already part of the Android OS.
No offence, Opera… but that looks terrible! You can’t deny that looks nothing like the actual web site here. What’s that all about? It may be caused in part by our rather amateurish CSS coding, but still. The webkit browser correctly guesses what we mean.
Still, the ability to copy text from a web page is useful, if you happen to spend a lot of your day pasting things from other web sites into your own…
But pages often look out of scale and rather odd. Not fans of it at all. We’ll stop there, before the browser fanatics turn up and start causing trouble. Here’s the full press release:
Lightning fast browsing on Android phones
Opera Mini 5.1 for Android released
Oslo, Norway — July 14, 2010Opera spreads the love to Android mobile phone users. Opera Mini 5.1 is now available for phones built on the Android platform, offering better browsing performance and improved user experience.
With over 61 million users worldwide, Opera Mini is the world’s most popular browser for mobile phones, allowing much faster browsing speeds, while keeping the costs to a minimum. Browse at lightning speed today by downloading the free Opera Mini browser from the Android Market or at m.opera.com.
Opera Mini is a favorite not just on feature phones, but also on smartphones, scoring an impressive 1 million downloads on the iPhone during the first 24 hours of availability. Opera Mini is highly optimized for almost any handset, delivering the best Internet experience on more than 3000 mobile phone models.
Opera Mini raises the game on Android phones. Since its Opera Mini 5 beta release, Opera Mini can now be set as the default browser for more convenient Internet access. Opera Mini 5.1 also offers improved page layout on high-end Android handsets with large screens.
What we say
“Opera Mini 5.1 for the Android platform is the next step in bringing the world’s most popular mobile web browser to all major platforms, offering improved performance and great web experience to almost any handset,” says Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software. “Opera Mini is used by over 61 million people on more than 3000 handset models and with today’s release Opera continues its mission to provide the best web experience on any device and on any platform.”
About Opera Mini
Opera Mini brings the Web to almost any handset by compressing data by up to 90 percent before sending content to the phone. This results in significantly improved page loading speed and reduced data costs for the user. For example, with webpages such as BBC.com, a normal mobile web browser will display a BBC News page roughly 1 time, as compared to 9 times with Opera Mini for the same cost.
In addition to providing speed and cost savings, Opera Mini 5.1 comes with useful features, such as tabbed browsing, password manager, bookmarks and Speed Dial, built into the browser to deliver easy web access while on-the-go. With Opera Mini optimized for Android phones, more people are able to get a PC-like browsing experience on their handsets.
Download
Download Opera Mini directly to your Android phone for free from the Android Market, or at m.opera.com. For more information, visit http://www.opera.com/mobile/.
Video
Watch the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJTaKch7OIU.
Screenshots
Screenshots are available at: http://www.opera.com/press/resources/.
It’s smooth to use, the 1080p display is sharp, clear and bright, the device is extremely light and thin and therefore very pocketable and portable — much more so than other 5-inch phones we’ve used. And yet… we’re a bit unimpressed by the overall package…
A relatively high-spec smartphone, with a 4.5″ display running at 480 x 854 resolution and powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, plus the Ascend G510 arrives running Android 4.1.1 — albeit potentially hindered by Huawei only sticking 512MB of RAM inside it..
The Panasonic Eluga marks the company’s return to the European mobile phone scene years after several years of absence, and it’s come back to us with a moderately high-spec Android model that features a rather stylish, slim case.
Sony returns with an all-new mobile design for 2012, pairing a dual-core processor with a 720p display. It’s a lovely phone, but is it enough to end our Samsung and HTC obsession?
LG’s updated Prada phone comes with an absolutely crazy black & white theme, but is it just for fashionable suit wearers who want to make themselves look a bit more interesting?
MarkG
/ July 14, 2010Loving it. It’s WAY better than the built in browser. Much faster too.
Gary C
/ July 14, 2010Doesn’t it leave huge gaps around the text in half the pages you look at? I just can’t live with its random page rendering.
Dougster
/ July 14, 2010I have been using the beta version for a while now and think it is superb.
MarkG
/ July 14, 2010No problems here, it’s doing EXACTLY what I expect, it’s reformatting a website designed for desktop 4:3 and 16:9 ratios to best fit on a small screen that taller rather than wider.
Your site is not very mobile friendly in it’s design as it’s got those silly blocks at the side. (recent comments etc.)
I’ve been using the Opera Mini 5 beta for some time, and the only annoyance was that it was do good but I couldn’t make it my default browser. 5.1 adds this feature, so I am well happy. It complements (and works with) Opera browser on the desktop nicely indeed.
Dougster
/ July 14, 2010Default browser option is fantastic. Spotted that first on update.
I have used Dophin Browser in the past but Opera Mini is way faster.
(1.5 Orange Hero)
Dougster
/ July 15, 2010It seems the “search with” function has been added to the “copy text”
Also super fast.
Has EuroDroid been converted yet?
Gary C
/ July 15, 2010I hardly ever use an actual browser on the phone, to be honest. I haven’t uninstalled it yet and will persevere.
Jack
/ July 15, 2010If you don’t like the page zooming use the mobile view. Its a lot faster than the Android browser, Chrome light.
Same as computer browsers in speed tests. Opera > Chrome > Safari > Firefox
I haven’t used Fennec yet but I’d imagine thats the same as Firefox, bloated and slow as an old boot.
sansenoy
/ July 23, 2010Still, Opera has proper bookmark management, bookmark folders are still an exotic feature in the rest of the android universe, it seems…