Archive for: opera mini
Opera Mini is great and all — It’s been downloaded hundreds of millions of times — but let’s face it, it has “Mini” in it’s name. For basic phones, it is far and wide better than the built in browser. But smartphones are a different beast. They have much beefier specs, and as such, can handle quite a bit more 1′s and 0′s. Thankfully Opera feels the same way. The upcoming Android version is claimed to be arriving “soon”, and packing tasty features such as hardware acceleration and pinch-to-zoom.
Android already has some awesome third party browsers including Firefox, Skyfire, and Dolphin. Let’s not forget the stock browser though, as it is up there in the rankings as one of the best mobile browsers. Regardless of what you use day in and day out, another option to play around with is more than welcome. Anyone looking forward to the new Opera Mobile for Android?
iPhone/iPod Touch users who spend a pretty good minute on the web, today is a day to remember, for it is the day in which Opera submitted their iPhone version of Opera Mini to the App Store. The reason for the whole show is simply because, there’s a fair chance that the ever so intelligent and common sense filled (/sarcasm) App Store approvers will reject the app. The reasoning if Apple does in fact do so isn’t anything new. They’ll simply label it as “duplicating functionality” of an app already present on the iPhone (made by Apple).
Personally I feel a bit of competition in the form of “duplicate apps” is a god send. I guess a little choice is too much. Oh well. If things go south the legitimate route, Opera can always make an even bigger statement by putting Opera Mini up on Cydia for download. That would turn some heads and piss off Apple no less.
How Apple handles this will be pretty big either way. If they accept Opera Mini, it will be a monumental change from previous claims of “duplicate functionality” and the ensuing rejections that followed. If they deny it, well, the App Store will be dead to me. Denying a clearly helpful, useful, and all around great app just because they don’t want any competition with their in-house apps is bullshit.
BGR
- February 11, 2010 12:57 pm
Holla! Whoop whoop! Time to get excited. Skyfire is coming to Android!
Mobile browsing has steadily gotten better over the last several years with better hardware and software teaming up. Regardless of what OS, processor, or type of display you have, the only thing that truly matters in mobile web browsing is the browser itself. Even today, most phones have pretty craptastic apps installed called “browsers”, with some manufacturers even going as far as to brag about the “HTML” aspect. Even with “HTML”, most standard browsers suck.
Truth be told, today we have several viable options that are worth a look, or two, or three. There’s the standards such as Mobile Safari on the iPhone and Mobile Chrome on Android, but those are more dependent on the OS. Instead, more “universal” browsers that are actually worth talking about include Opera Mini, Opera Mobile, Fennec, and SkyFire.
Opera Mini is an amazingly successful mobile browser that spans across hundreds of devices and offers fast speeds in a light footprint. Opera Mobile requires more powerful hardware, but still offers an even fuller featured browsing experience while on the go if not a slightly slower pace. Fennec is the new wonder browser that debuted on the Nokia N900, with plans to move onward to Android in the not too distant future. But the real reason we’re talking about mobile browsers today is Skyfire.
Skyfire, like Opera Mini users server-side compression technology to compress each and every page you browser before it actually gets to your phone. Doing that removes a solid 60%+ from your actual device’s data stream making your wait times and data usage much less — a very good thing. It’s already been highly talked up in it’s current Windows Mobile dressing for it’s speed, rending accuracy, and overall ease of use. Best of all (to some), it is 100% fully Flash compatible. Good news for Android users, it’s coming home.
In an announcement today, Skyfire announced that they have acquired Kolbysoft — the company which makes the Android “Steel” browser — in hopes to better develop a new Android browser.
According to Skyfire’s CEO:
By adding kolbysoft’s talent to Skyfire, we’ll be able to fuse the best of Skyfire’s famed cloud-computing multimedia capabilities with the Webkit browser movement to create a better hybrid model for Android. Steel has been the most acclaimed browser in the Android Marketplace, adding features atop Webkit. Together, we’ll be able to do so much more.
Don’t go waiting in any digital line to get early news on Skyfire’s new Android development as they’re still in the early stages. Now with Kolbysoft’s talent in the Android realm however, things should pick up. One last thing worth mentioning before we leave is that the Skyfire Android browser will run atop the WebKit rendering engine already used by the stock Android browser. Some may see this as a sour point. But, if Skyfire can work their magic in conjunction with the server-side compression technology, Skyfire for Android could be even better than Fennec for Android. Well, ok. Maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself there.
Geeked?
Gizmodo > Skyfire
- December 9, 2009 12:48 pm
Being on the mobile web just a few short years ago meant navigating extremely rudimentary WAP web pages and dealing with painfully slow load times. That is if you could even get a site to properly/completely load on your device. Thankfully technology doesn’t sit still and in fact runs a breakneck speed. In today’s world, we have browsers such as Mobile Safari, Mobile Chrome, SkyFire, and Opera mini to name a few. While all of the mobile browsers listed (and several unlisted) are all good in most forms, SkyFire is the contender taking the cake today. You see, that little browser that could was upgraded with a new set of numbers and freshened up feature set today. The enhancements aren’t minor ones either but are actually fairly worthwhile.
The newest SkyFire brings many features to the table such as:
- Sleeker, more finger friendly UI
- Crisper text & smoother scrolling
- Full support for higher resolution screens. Now natively supporting VGA and wVGA displays
What do you think? Worth your time? Let me remind all of you that besides the newly released features, SkyFire is the only (free) mobile browser that supports both Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight. Now, personal mileage will vary as some lesser powered phones may have a few performance issues when encountering flash/silverlight content. But I surely can’t argue with the fact that something is better than nothing.
If I were you and had a device that was able to take advantage of SkyFire, I wouldn’t hesitate even for a second. Pick up your copy of SkyFire here and get ready to question yourself as to how you ever scoured the digital web without it…
TechCrunch
Using a mobile device to browse the web was nothing short of an excruciating experience not too long ago. In fact, before the iPhone came along, it out right sucked. That is unless you had some flavor of Opera Mini running on your phone. The beauty of this browser was that the main rendering was done on Opera Mini’s servers wit the resulting content arriving at your phone being roughly 10% of the original size cutting loading time and increasing browsing speed greatly. Opera Mini 5 ushered in a slew of new features and a completely redesigned interface that promised to catapult Opera Mini even further ahead in the mobile browser market. For those mobile internet junkies, Opera would like to announce that the next phase has begun — Opera Mini 5 beta 2. The updated feature set includes:
- Opera Link, to keep Opera Mini synchronized
- Progressive loading — pages are now transmitted in chunks instead of one big piece
Don’t let me do all the work. Go to http://m.opera.com/next on your mobile device and get the latest in greatest in mobile browsing.
[Press Release]
Opera Mini Blog
- November 6, 2009 10:43 am
Those enough who either don’t want a higher end smartphone or simply can’t afford one know that on your mid to lower-end devices web browsing is a chore. Pages render like crap, it takes forever to open a simple link, etc. Many phones as of late are capable of running some form or another of the Opera browser whether it be the free, almost universal Opera Mini to the more desktop-like Opera Mobile variant. Either way, Opera while not quite the reckoning force it would like to be in the desktop arena is certainly a large force in the mobile sphere.
The iPhone already has an amazing browser with Mobile Safari. But does that mean someone else couldn’t come along and do better? Without a doubt, no. If you haven’t gathered yet, I’m leading to a potential release of Opera on the iPhone platform — if Apple loosens the restrictions that is. Jon von Tetzchner, Opera’s CEO has come forward and announced that his company has already developed a fully working iPhone version of Opera. What isn’t immediately clear however is how this browser works. Is it more like a server side browser which pre-renders and crunches pages like Opera Mini? Or is it a more robust offering akin to the higher-end Opera Mobile? An Opera Mini-esque version would speed up iPhone browsing even more while greatly reducing load on the carriers’ networks. (AT&T turns and takes notice). Meanwhile, a version based off of Opera Mobile would I assume bring many enhancements and functionality that currently lacks in Mobile Safari. I wouldn’t rule out a touched up UI either. So how soon can we expect this?
Don’t get too excited yet folks. Apple’s SDK strictly prohibits any apps from duplicating the functionality of native iPhone apps which means any full, third party browser hasn’t the slightest chance of making it through the ban hammer that is the App Store approval process. When questioned as to if Opera has reached out to Apple, Mr. Tetzchner said that “at the time” (eluding to earlier this past year) the company had not attempted to contact Apple. Have they contacted Apple or even attempted to in the last few weeks or months? That’s anybodies guess. For now, the Opera team is sitting on this fully capable and most likely awesome browser that sadly won’t see the light of day anytime soon — if ever. Still, if Apple does ever open up in that sense, Opera will be right there ready and waiting.
Electric Pig > The Register
With the demand for mobile internet quickly growing and manufacturers rushing to keep up, the line between the traditional “smartphone”, “featurephone”, and “dumbphone” are quickly becoming obscure. It was only a couple years ago that a top of the line smartphone was the only way to enjoy WAP web pages and now, a few short years later we have HTML browsers cropping up all over the mobile device price range. But it’s about to get even better. AT&T has just released a generous selection of feature phones that…feature a fully capable HTML web browser based on the widely known and uber popular Opera mini web browser.
The new att.net web browser as it is renamed on AT&T’s devices features a unique three window approach. The three windows are broken down as such:
- The first page consists of a “homescreen” where users can enter bookmarks, configure settings, and enter the URL’s that they wish to visit.
- Page two is all about local information. Everything from restaurants and ATM’s to bars and gas stations, to maps and driving directions, this page is your local search mecca.
- Finally, the third and final page dishes up more global information such as the days top headlines, entertainment news, as well a buffet of other types of news from big name sites.
To date, this is certainly Opera’s largest carrier deal, solidifying there place in the mobile market. In my previous experiences with Opera mini on BlackBerry, (also taking into account the recent release of Opera mini 5 beta), users of AT&T’s new featurephones should definitely be pleased with their mobile internet experiences. If you have one of the new phones with the new att.net browser, send in a few pics to share with the rest of us.
IntoMobile
- September 14, 2009 3:07 pm
Packin’ a mobile device that either doesn’t have a browser that’s up to snuff or simply prefer the processing power and light load of Opera Mini? Good news…perhaps. A new teaser on Opera Mini’s site shows the simple tagline: “The Next Generation in Mobile Browsing”. What will it bring to the hot mobile browsing front? Will it decimate all other competitors? We’ll just have to wait a little longer as all of that information is relegated to “coming soon” status. See, it may not be the greatest news you were hoping for. Now you know something is coming but don’t know what and have to wait. The things we go through in life…
Source: Ubergizmo
The “mobile browser war” seems to in for a year of fierce competition. With Mobile Safari so far dominating mobile web use, the other mobile OS developers aren’t sitting down. Opera Mobile, Opera mini, Mozilla’s Mobile Firefox (Fennec), and Bitstream’s BOLT browser are all competing for you love and attention. In a press release to more or less gloat (hey with numbers like those above I would too) about their success in the last month. What kind of success? How about over 300,00 users who collectively visited over 15 million pages! That is a huge amount of traffic in just one month! So mobile web users have you used BOLT yet? Likes/Dislikes? Let us know! If you haven’t downloaded the Bolt browser yet you can get a copy right here. Hopefully BOLT keeps up the momentum as it is a very promising browser.
Source: Into Mobile
