Have you tried the Opera browser? For your mobile device? There are four mobile versions of Opera available, one for Symbian Series 60, Windows Smartphone, Pocket PC, and a Java based version that will run on a large number of Java enabled mobile phones from various manufacturers. Opera has been developing mobile browsing for many years, finally cuminating in an excellent solution for Windows Mobile.
We’ve been using the lastest release of the Opera browser for Pocket PC with good result so far. The tabbed display and full-functionality of the browser allows for much better mobile blogging, browsing and looking things up.
At right and below are a few sample screens from Opera that show the tabbed interface on a Pocket PC. Opera also has a “Full Screen” option that allows the browser to use the menu and status bar areas on the Pocket PC to display more information.
Additional features in Opera for Pocket PC are:
- Small Screen Rendering
- Zoom
- Download Manager
- Bookmarks
- Pop-Up Handler
- Context Menus
- Web Address Auto-Complete
- Single Column Display
- Portrait and Landscape Display Modes
- Full/Fit Screen
- Custom User Preference Support
- Navigation and History
- Secure HTTP Support with on-screen indication
- Tabbed Browsing
Opera for Pocket PC also supports VGA resolutions and landscape displays as shown on the right.
The Pocket PC version does use a bit of RAM, though only a few phone devices will see issues. On our test MDA we did need to make sure to close other memory-hungry applications when running Opera (and vice-versa).
Performance with the MDA’s EDGE data connection was quite pleasent, but the real performance gem in Opera is the Small Screen Rendering technology that Opera has been perfecting for a long time.
By enabling the “Single Column” option, Opera automatically resizes the web page to fit on the smaller QVGA (or VGA) screen. This method does not warp as many sites as one may think. Basically, Opera simply changes the way it renders button graphics, picture sizes, and the text flow around these page components.
The result is a quick, very readable version of most every page. There are some sites that don’t work well with this method, however, most that we found were sites that did not follow many “best practices” for managing content online.
Opera’s version for Series 60 is also a stunner, especially when you consider the smaller screen on most S60 devices.
The same Small Screen Rendering has been applied here for more than 2 years (that’s when I found Opera for my 6600), and does the same great job of resizing pages and sites on a super-small screen.
Many of the same features are implemented in this version, like Full/Fit Screen, Search/Find, Auto Complete, Tabbed Browsing, Zoom, Password Manager, and keypad shortcuts.
If you need a mobile browser with more power than the built-in version on your device, check out Opera for Mobile Devices.
Click here for more information on Opera Mobile.
Additional reviews of Opera Mobile can be found at:
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