Opera Mobile

Opera Mobile is a web browser for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) developed by the Opera Software company. The first version of Opera Mobile was released in 2000 for the Psion Series 7 and netBook. Today, Opera Mobile is available for a variety of devices that run Windows Mobile, or S60 and UIQ user interfaces of the Symbian operating system.



History

The first devices to run a mobile edition of Opera were the Psion Series 5, Psion Series 5mx, then Psion Series 7 and Psion netBook. They ran Opera Mobile 3.6, released in 2000.

Opera Mobile was ported to the Windows Mobile operating system in 2003.

* Version 6.0 was the initial release.
* On June 25, 2003, the first update came in the form of version 6.01, which was a minor update, mainly correcting bugs.
* Version 6.10, released on October 27, 2003, introduced several user interface and usability improvements, considerably optimized performance, and slightly improved page rendering. It was also the first version to support proxy servers, WAP pages, and the first one to be released in localized versions for 9 different languages.
* On July 13, 2005, almost two years after the previous iteration, version 8.0 was launched. This version was the first to require Symbian OS 7 (previous ones could function in Symbian 6.1). This version introduced the Opera Mobile Accelerator, a technology that used an Opera-run external server to slim-down the pages' content to reduce the traffic to the phones. This was also the first version to support dynamic HTML, and greatly improved compatibility with several web standards.
* On November 14, 2005, version 8.5 was introduced. This version introduced password management and form auto-filling functionality, added some more languages for localized versions, and made some improvements to stability and reduced-screen rendering quality.
* On April 5, 2006, version 8.6 was released and was also the first version to support Symbian OS 9. New to this version is the ability to support multiple browsing windows, support for Scalable Vector Graphics, introduction of URL autocompletion as well several changes in the customization aspect. It was also the first version of Opera Mobile that allowed for the possibility to configure it as the device's default browser, allowing for it to be launched whenever a web page was requested to be opened.
* Version 8.65 was released on August 29, 2006, which was mostly a welcome makeover and optimization to the then considered mature 8.60.
* Opera Mobile 9.0 was announced on February 2007 with a planned feature list, "coming soon" banners in the official Opera Mobile website, and official announcements in Opera's Community Forum. With no reason given, version 9.0 was cancelled, all references to it swept from Opera's site and 8.65 went back to being the latest version, being given a very slight refresh in the form of a new build that offered a handful of hardly-noticeable features, some of them platform-dependent.
* On February 5, 2008, Opera Mobile 9.5 was announced and has been given several estimated release timeframes, each of which has been silently ignored with a new one being set after it. An initial beta version of Opera Mobile 9.5 was released on July 17, 2008, although the only platform supported by this version was Windows Mobile.
* A second beta release of Opera Mobile 9.50 was made on October 20, 2008, including support for Opera Widgets, and adding Symbian UIQ3 as a further platform. With this release, the newest version of Opera Mobile for Symbian S60 remains 8.65.
* On March 26, 2009, Opera announced that there won't be any final version of Opera mobile 9.5. Instead they would flip over to developing 9.7 because of changes in the Presto layout engine.
* On June 8, 2009, Opera Mobile 9.7 beta was made available for download. It introduced the new rendering engine Presto 2.2 and Opera Turbo. Other features planned for 9.7 are an improved Widget manager, Google Gears and OpenGL ES support.
* On November 2, 2009, Opera Mobile 10 beta for Symbian S60 was made available for download, sporting a revamped user interface and performance enhancements.

Features

Opera Mobile can dynamically reformat Web pages for narrow tall screens, using Opera's Small Screen Rendering (SSR) technology. The technology itself is proprietary, but Web page authors can affect how their content is handled by SSR with Cascading Style Sheets.

Opera Mobile supports many web standards, as well as Ajax.

Awards

* Smartphone and PocketPC Magazine "Best mobile browser for both Windows-based Pocket PC and Smartphones" 2007
* Mobile Gala "Best program for mobile phones" 2004
* Mobile Gala "Best program for handheld computers" 2004
* Tietokone magazine "Best Software Product of the Year" 2003

Devices



Opera Mobile comes pre-installed on some devices, and often a special build is made for the particular device. Some devices that feature Opera Mobile pre-installed are:

* Nokia N90
* Sony Ericsson P1
* Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1
* HTC Touch Diamond
* HTC Touch Diamond2
* HTC Touch Pro
* HTC Touch Pro 2
* HTC Touch HD
* Meizu M8
* Creative Zii
* Samsung i900 Omnia

Future development

The Opera Software company announced that Opera Mobile 9 would support widgets and offer a more intelligent zoom feature. Opera Mobile 9's internal builds passed the Acid2 test. Opera Mobile 9 was being ported from the desktop edition of Opera. It was expected to be released in the first half of 2008. On February 5, 2008, Opera announced that it would now instead be working on towards releasing Opera Mobile 9.5, in order to unify its Opera Mobile and desktop browser product around the same release version and underlying rendering engine. A pre-alpha internal build of Opera Mobile 9.5 was leaked onto the Internet, for the Windows Mobile platform. There are now multiple different versions of Opera Mobile leaked on the internet, with varying rendering speeds and even different way of zooming. Some versions now even support flashlite 3.1 for full youtube and flash webpage support. Opera has since released the official beta: Opera Mobile site

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