Opera Mini 5 – beta version is 1/ now available, 2/ AWESOME

Anyone who’s read this blog for any length of time will know that I’m a big fan of the mobile browsers that Opera make. I personally use Opera Mobile on my X1 (well, for the moment I do… more on that in a second), and up till I got the X1, I used Opera Mini. And it ain’t just me who loves Opera Mini, as it’s the most downloaded mobile app in history.

Well, now, there’s a new version, Opera Mini 5.

And it is, genuinely, utterly, completely, 100% AWESOME. Like properly incredible. Never mind most downloaded, thanks to version 5, I am now happy to say that Opera Mini is the singlebest app in mobile phone history. And yes, I have downloaded it to try it, so let’s have a look at what makes it so bleedin’ brilliant.

First up is speed, something that’s been a mainstay of Opera Mini right since the beginning. As with previous incarnations, it renders the web page on their servers, and then pumps the result down to your phone. And that makes it fast. Frighteningly fast. As in, it took but 2 seconds to load the BBC homepage. That’s rather impressive, that is.

The big thing about version 5, though, is that Opera have spent most of their time refining the user interface. The interface was good in previous versions, but it got a glorious beating from the likes of its big brother, Opera Mobile. Y’know, ‘cos of kinetic, finger-swipy scrolling, and things like that. Well, Opera Mini 5 now has kinetic finger scrolling. And the same double-tap to zoom. And it’s smoother and faster than Opera Mobile (at least, it’s faster than Opera Mobile 9.5… I shall download version 9.7 soon, to compare them)!

Oh, and it has tabbed browsing, as well. I simply can’t describe how much of a good thing that is.

[EDIT: Holy monkeys, I just found one of the bits of touch-optimisation Opera Mini includes, for touchscreen phones. It's actually got its own built-in touch-keyboard. I'm STUNNED...]

So, all in all, considering it will now view all the pages that Opera Mobile will view, will let you look at them with an interface as slick as its big brother, and do all of that faster than its big brother, it’s hardly surprising that I have now, actually started using Opera Mini, instead of Opera Mobile, as my main browser.

That is how good it is.

If you have a mobile phone, and use the internet, or if you are even thinking about using the internet on it, then without question, you need Opera Mini. It is, as far as I’m concerned, the single most important app in the history of mobile phones. Even at this early beta stage, I simply cannot recommend it enough…

Ah, but the story doesn’t end there. As I said earlier, I’m comparing it to version 9.5 of Opera Mobile, not the newest version. The newest version, only available on WinMo so far, is allegedly Opera Mobile, but with the speed advantages of Opera Mini shoehorned in. So, I will be downloading it, and comparing the two. Expect another blog post with the full battle between the two, very soon.

But even after I do that, I can honestly say that Opera Mini may well be the more important of the two, simply due to the sheer number of phones it can run on (ie/ any phone that’s got Java, which is, well, most of them in the world). No other app has the potential to enhance as many people’s lives
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