Opera Mini v2.0 Released

Posted By: Ryan Thursday, May 4, 2006 12:08:29 PM

Opera Software has released Opera Mini v2.0, the new version of the smartphone web browser that runs on almost every mobile phone including the Palm Treo. The new version of Opera Mini supports downloading MP3s, improved bookmarks, saving images and other Web content directly to their mobile device.

New features in Opera Mini 2.0 include:

Opera Mini browser for Treo
  • Content download: Download images, MP3s, etc. directly to the phone.
  • New skins: Make Opera Mini your own by selecting from several new and bold skins to suit your mood.
  • Multisearch: Opera Mini offers advanced searching functionality by allowing users to select extra search engines for the home page.
  • Speed dial: Bookmarks displayed on the home page are assigned a shortcut key combination, giving users faster and easier access to their favorite sites.
  • Visual navigation: Quick and smooth horizontal panning when browsing backwards or forwards.

Opera Mini now supports seamless mobile commerce via SMS. For example, users can click directly on the Web site to purchase ringtones, games and other content which will then be delivered as an SMS. The charge will appear in the phone bill as an SMS with the price set by the seller. This form of mobile commerce - direct from the browser to SMS - simplifies the transaction for both the business and the consumer.

To download direct your mobile phone browser to http://mini.opera.com (No cost) or see this page for a SMS download for your country (small fee applies).

Opera Mini for Palm OS requires you have the Palm Java Micro Environment installed. More details on the Palm OS version are available here.

Opera Mini is available in the following languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Russian, Polish, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish. More languages will be available shortly.

Article Comments

 (15 comments)

The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. PalmInfocenter is not responsible for them in any way.
Please Login or register here to add your comments.

Start a new Comment Down

Works great on Palm LifeDrive...

jdebay @ 5/4/2006 4:23:41 PM # Q
try it you will like it...

J

Linux (Xandro) and Palm (T3) forever...

Reply to this comment

Doesn't support 480 resolution?

palmato @ 5/4/2006 5:17:32 PM # Q
Unlike its predecessor, this one doesn't seem to support full screen resolution on my TX. When the input area is collapsed, it just shows a blank rectangle instead and the opera menu disappears.
MMMH, not a pretty sight.

The basic version instead just locks the input area, thus becoming quite useless.


--------------------------
Hey Admin: Why do we have to keep two profiles?

Reply to this comment

Opera Mini 2.0

jaynor @ 5/4/2006 6:05:22 PM # Q
So I take it that this browser doesn't require a phone connection.

And from the two previous comments, it appears that it works on a T3 but not a TX? (I have a TX.)

Reply to this comment

Nice improvements

Clymmer @ 5/4/2006 5:57:59 PM # Q
I've the previous Mini for several months and used it as my primary browser except for file downloads. For those I swapped out to WebPro.

Now, Mini 2 "supports downloads" . . . but the way it does it is not what you'd think. When you click on a download link, it warns you that Opera Mini may be exited -- then it automagically launches the built in browser to handle the download. Mini doesn't actually handle the download, other than redirecting to another application and filling in the URL. Some would call that elegant, other would call it a kludge. Either way, it works -- but after the download, you have to relaunch Mini to continue the Opera experience.

The skins are a nice idea, pretty limited right now (mainly color changes). The scroll-transitions are eye candy. It seems to be a bit more stable overall so far, so that's good. There's also still some distortion to the higher resolution pictures -- on my TC, a small percentage of the bottom of a picture is skewed out of line. It's not a huge thing, but just kind of weird looking sometimes.

Personally, I think it still offers the best handheld browsing experience overall. Also, now I have Opera to blame for getting me into blogging as blog space comes with your free Opera account. Fun stuff!

C.
_________________
http://my.opera.com/clym

RE: Nice improvements
cervezas @ 5/4/2006 6:50:42 PM # Q
That's because Java MIDP doesn't normally have access to the device's file system (few MIDP phones even have file systems). The J9 VM that IBM created for Palm does, however, so it's conceivable that there could be a future version that supports download without having to sublaunch a native browser.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Nice improvements
palmato @ 5/5/2006 7:12:05 AM # Q
Check if fileconnect.prc is installed: maybe opera allows downloads to the sd card if the file access library is available. Even though I doubt it.



--------------------------
Hey Admin: Why do we have to keep two profiles?

Reply to this comment

Worthy Download vs. Treo 650 Browser?

Gekko @ 5/5/2006 7:42:10 PM # Q

Should I bother with this on my Treo 650? Big improvement?

RE: Worthy Download vs. Treo 650 Browser?
Ryan @ 5/5/2006 7:57:44 PM # Q
I would say yes, I am considering switching as this new version is much improved and has some nice visual features. Its only about 225k so it doesn't hog that much space if you already have the java junk installed.
RE: Worthy Download vs. Treo 650 Browser?
joad @ 5/6/2006 2:46:17 PM # Q
"it doesn't hog that much space if you already have the java junk installed."

yup, that's the key, isn't it? The only other use I have for the 3-4MB of those hoggy Java files is Kmaps, but it's more novelty than anything I regularly use. Ferget about the silly Java games and such...

You can try manually moving the Java files out of RAM and then into RAM everytime you need to run a Java application, but it's a royal pain. Opera seems to be coming along o.k., but basically it's dead-in-the-water as a primary Palm browser because of the RAM footprint, kludgy navigation, and s-l-o-w bootup.

Opera is nice to have as a "backup" browser for those pages that Blazer can't display for NVFS errors, bad formatting, s-l-o-w rendering and all the other reasons Blazer sucks. But until Palm releases some Treo hardware capable of properly supporting an address book AND a few applications including Java and such, we're stuck with major compromises like this to get around their "cheaping out" on the Treo 6xx's RAM specifications.

Reply to this comment

Problems with it crashing?

wannitnow @ 5/6/2006 4:23:00 AM # Q
It does feel and look good. Very fast too with GPRS... BUT I am using it with my Treo600 and it crashes alot... Does anyone else have similar problems?

RE: Problems with it crashing?
Ryan @ 5/6/2006 1:41:48 PM # Q
yeah thats its main problem, it locks up and resets my 650 from time to time as well. It is a known issue with the current treo version.
RE: Problems with it crashing?
joad @ 5/6/2006 2:56:29 PM # Q
...It's not an "issue," it's a FEATURE!!!!

RE: Problems with it crashing?
Clymmer @ 5/8/2006 12:51:11 PM # Q
Well actually, Mini 2 crashes less than Mini 1 used to for me. I'm running it on a Tungsten C. You might want to tweak some of your Java preferences (increase the memory maximum & the java thread stack size at least. I also use double buffering and high res coordinates). It's still my main browser and I like it overall.

I've also noticed that if I am in the process of loading a page and I hit my center button (center of the directional pad), Mini 2 will freeze and I have to reset to clear it up. It's a pain, but it's easily avoided.

Sometimes I wonder if the crashing has to do with the increased complexities of running an application in a Java environment that's running on the Palm OS platform. Just another layer where stuff can go wrong . . .

C.

Reply to this comment

does NOT support downloading files!

zuhmir @ 5/8/2006 9:04:24 AM # Q
it's the best browser i have seen so far! but it doesn't support any kinf of file doenloading, it can only open your default browser automaticly to download the file....

RE: does NOT support downloading files!
princehifi @ 5/10/2006 12:18:01 PM # Q
I loaded it on my T3 (with WiFi) and I was not impressed. No 320x480 mode and its compression/rendering of web pages makes it hit or miss for finding your information. One feature that I do like is how the Back button loads the previous page instantly from cache.

The unauthorized install of Picsel Browser is more what I'm looking for in a Palm webbrowser.

Reply to this comment
Start a New Comment Thread Top

Account

Register Register | Login Log in
user:
pass:

Latest Comments

  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST((SELECT/**/CASE/**/IS_SRVROLEMEM
  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST((SELECT/**/CASE/**/IS_SRVROLEMEM
  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST((SELECT/**/CASE/**/IS_SRVROLEMEM
  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST(db_name()/**/AS/**/NVARCHAR(4000
  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST(db_name()/**/AS/**/NVARCHAR(4000
  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST(db_name()/**/AS/**/NVARCHAR(4000
  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST(db_name()/**/AS/**/NVARCHAR(4000
  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST(db_name()/**/AS/**/NVARCHAR(4000