Opera Software today announced the release of Opera Mini, the full Web browser that runs on almost every mobile Java phone, including low- and mid-end handsets. Opera Mini compresses Web pages by up to 80% and reformats them using Small-Screen Rendering for easy and fast browsing on small, mobile screens. For the end-user, this means faster browsing and dramatically reduced phone bills for those who pay per KB in data traffic. Screenshots rendering OSNews and our sister-site GnomeFiles.
Opera Mini 1.2-Final Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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browsing the web at such low res seems somewhat of a gadget/show-off feature, with little practical use. to add insult to injury, it’s usually expensive and probably impacts your battry life.
then again I already feel somewhat clostrophobic on 14″ 1024×768.
Edited 2006-01-24 19:56
On a handset that has good fonts and a good browser, even 128×160 is enough. OSNews is fully browsable on such a resolution for example. Then again, OSNews has spent half of its life optimizing for such browsers/resolutions.
Seriously, this is why Nokia created the N770 internet tablet. So users with phones can pair it with their phone and browse the internet through the internet tablet’s 800×480 resolution.
Besides, all new phones now come with QVGA screens, which is enough IF the sites are optimized for this resolution (which are not, of course).
That’s not quite true. I have developed WAP frontend to our company financial system. So, when you’re at customer you can reserve invoice, see details, query user database. It’s not as flashy as orginal interface, and it’s almost read-only because of security, but still, comes very handy.
I’m going to office by bus. It’s 30 minutes I can spare to read papers OR see what’s on OSNews.
It is cool though. I love Opera software, they never cease to amaze me.
I’ve used Opera mini since the first release, and it’s great. A server compresses big pages to around 10kb and both posting in forums and reading normal pages. And since I’ve only got a pretty simple phone with no 3G or EDGE, this solution is the only acceptable one.
operas decision to go strong into the mobile market was defenently a good one. this is more than likely going ot be a very lucerative endevor for them
Does anyone know of a way to run the this browser under windows or linux for development purposes?
Yes, the way I did it to get these screenshots. You download and install the Sony Ericsson Java SDK and then you email me so I can give you the proper .jad and .jar files (both are needed on the SonyEricsson SDK, some editing of the .jad is required too, so you will need my version).
Opera used to charge for their very good Symbian browser and for the proxy access that compressed the data. How come they’re giving it all for free now. How do they make money from it?
>How come they’re giving it all for free now.
This is easy to answer: because no carrier in the world used it. They probably had a very small interest by carriers, mostly because carriers have VERY specific guidelines about the features and layout and fonts of a browser, points that Opera Mini doesn’t support or doesn’t want to support.
>How do they make money from it?
Sometimes, it’s all about prestige and free marketing, in order to push other products from the same company.
BTW, an interesting discussion on Opera Mini is here too: http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008770.html
I know this is not a support site, but couldn’t find anything useful on the opera site. Anyone know how to change font size. The font size on my p910i is tiny.
You can only make the font smaller, not bigger. The point of Opera Mini is to fit as much information as possible in one screen, exactly because native browsers have very specific guidelines from carriers to use bigger fonts and geeks/tech-people were always unhappy with this fact.
IMHO, Opera Mini does the right thing using smaller fonts there, but it’s not going to please people with bad eyesight. For those people, better just use the native browser (except if a “use bigger font” option is going to be added in the future).
Fixed it. setting it to use the small font, in fact made the font bigger on my phone, so I’m a very happy camper. This is much better than the browser opera puts out for Symbian (which comes with the phone). The rendering is just fantastic.
Then, you just found a bug. On my Sony Ericsson it makes the font smaller, as it is supposed to.
Personaly i use an Opera mod by some DG-SC guy (yep, its a russian mod, you can get one with an english interface, though ), its even more feature complete and phone independant, also has a download manager and some other neet things like keypad navigation.
That opera mod is what opera mini should be.
Than again, there would not be an opera mini mod without opera mini.
for some reason links are shown out of place while scrolling and it’s a little slower than netfront on my phone
Browser: Opera/8.01 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/1.2.2960; en; U; ssr)
I think opera mini is impressive. 65kb download, renders most pages fine, fast, free. And best of all it works great on my aging 6610.
This even works on my antique 3510i. Will have to give this a try!
Well I just installed in on my Sony Ericsson k500i and it flies! I was always annoyed by the built-in browser, but Opera Mini feels like very solid software.
It’s fast, it looks good, I love it!
It even shows me what time it is! The lack of time display in the built-in browser has always annoyed me.
Can someone tell me how to get this working on a Psion Netbook (EPOC)?
Thanks
Does your Psion has java MIDP in it? If not, you can’t.
Yes, the Psion can run Java apps…
But it is not a phone, it is a PDA. I just would like to figure out the instructions for making the jar file work…
Do you have downloaded the .jar file? If yes, you should be able to run it via your java’s console/loader. If not, email me and I will send you the jar file.