Most of us are waiting for Opera Mobile for Android to somehow make it on Android phones but the next best thing has landed on the newswire: Opera Mini 5 Beta is now available for Android. And little brother browser ain't so shabby. Opera Mini 5 Beta comes with tabbed browsing, speed dial bookmarks, download manager, password manager, and other features. Opera Mini is typically a speedy browser and this iteration is no exception.
It's supposed to work with all Android devices so everyone gets to play! Try it out yourself by searching Opera Mini 5 in Android Market or by heading to m.opera.com/next
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I would love to see this running on the iphone, maybe in Cydia since apple will never approve another browser.
But this is why Android is so good, I don't have to jailbreak to install the apps i want.
looks like folks will be mad no pinch zooming. sorry
Who cares about Apple, this is an Android forum.
Works great and is very fast, just cant figure out how to zoom on the Droid
I was honestly thinking this was only going to be a minor improvement on a dated and pretty crappy mobile browser (let's be honest the previous opera mini that was available on the market was a joke and very buggy) but I was pleasantly surprised to find that Opera Mini 5 is fast, slick and overall very well done. I've heard some qualms about the lack of multitouch but I honestly prefer the double tap to zoom method as I've never really caught on to the whole pinch / zoom thing in a browser.
I'm not certain yet, but Opera Mini 5 may just be my next default browser, well until they bring Chrome to Android and make the mobile browser and the desktop browser synced...
Same here about the pinch zoom, it never works as it should. I like the double tapping better.
To me pinch and zoom just aren't as intuitive as most people say, if so we would have been using it a long time ago. On a larger screen I find it useful but on a mobile screen my fingers can never really coordinate where I want to zoom, that or its just not getting what I want.
That said a lot of people keep crying for it so I guess it's a good idea to include but I prefer it be included with an option to switch back to tapping.
I was actually rather unimpressed. Too bad, I was really looking forward to it.
*waits for firefox*
You mean Fennec ;) It looks friggin sweet. Probably would be better on a nice big screen like a tablet or Dell Mini 5 though.
Does it has flash support?
Well, I installed this about 5am this morning and tired to comment while using Opera. I couldn't get my comment to post. Not sure why.
I liked Opera when I had my Blackberry because it was pretty quick but hated how you would input text. Made filling out forms very slow.
Now, this morning I surfed several sites that I visit daily and found some issues.
FaceBook. For some reason it will not go to the "full site" It always goes back to Touch site.
Google. When selecting preferences, I cant use the touch screen (Moto Cliq) to make my selections. I have to use the D-pad and the a mouse arrow appears but still doesn't highlight the item I selected.
Still playing around with the settings and tying to get this to work better than Dolphin........if not....I'm going to uninstall.
Very nice surprise. Bravo Opera. Clean, intuitive and most importantly quite zippy. Bravo Opera.
Anyone know how to make this the default browser?
Google web apps don't auto-detect you're using a mobile browser when you're using Opera. At least that's my experience. I'd navigate to buzz.google.com, and where Android's default browser would reroute you to the mobile web app, Opera just keeps giving me the main page. Not Opera's fault, but disappointing.
Superfast. But whers the zoom?
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'd read somewhere that Opera Mini 5 suffers from the same issues the version for the Nintendo DS does... all traffic gets routed through Opera's proxy servers. That doesn't sit well with me.
It DOES get routed through their "transcoding" servers, but it's a feature! Just look at how fast those pages load!
If you're rightly concerned, though, apparently the connection has been encrypted since Opera Mini 3 Advanced.
http://www.opera.com/mini/help/faq/
This may sound like a stupid question, but what does Opera Mini offer over the stock Android browser. I mean, Opera Mini made sense on Blackberry because the BB browser is so lousy, but the Android browser seems quite good to me, so what is Opera offering that isn't already there? Is it just a pesonal preference thing?
-SR-
Really fast. Maybe the Nexus One is faster, but on my myTouch Opera loads pages SOOO much faster than Android browser.
I want to know the same thing before I download it?
Pretty good browser. The version before was ugly, and I'm glad they're bringing the Opera Mobile look to Opera Mini. This browser is also great for people who have low mobile bandwidth caps (damn you, Canadian carriers!), because Opera servers do a very good job of compressing everything.
tried it today and wasn't impressed. Pages do load quickly but its no faster than xscope. Plus xscope has pinch zooming and won't force you to load the mobile pages.
who cares about pinch zoom. don't know what the big deal is.
After using it more, I went back to the basic browser. It needs a few more features before I can really use it. You cannot set it a a default browser and there is no zoom on the Droid. Wont work if I have to copy and paste every link in my email