13 April 2009

Opera Mobile 9.7 (Turbo)
Coming Soon To S60 Devices!?

Norwegian internet browsers developer has announced the new Opera Mobile 9.7 browser at the CTIA Wireless Show.

The new browser version is initially only available for carriers and for business partners but consumers version is expected to be available soon as soon as at the beginning of the next month but the first beat will be available for windows mobile users only.

As you may have already know, for the last couple of months, Norwegian company has been focused only on developing its browser for Windows Mobile touchscreen devices and the Sony Ericsson’s UIQ platform but without support for the world’s leading Smartphone platform since the version 8.65.

Fortunately, now at least there is a hope that we’ll get the Symbian S60 version of the Opera Mobile browser, even better they are actually working on the native S60 port of their latest mobile browser according to the official company’s blog.

With regards to Symbian S60, I can only tell you that we're working on it.. but I'll also add that it's really awesome, and we can't wait to let you guys play with it.

This is awesome news although it is not quite clear when we'll get it and which version of the platform will be supported!? To be really honest with you I am not optimistic about the non-touch-screen version and support for the 3rd edition devices because complete Opera's UI needs to be reinvented for the key controlled UI.

From other hand, the current version of the Opera browser is optimized for the Touch User Interface and it will be much easier to port it to Nokia’s 5th edition than develop entirely new UI for non-touch devices.

The Opera Mobile 9.7 Beta for WiMo devices
will include the following great new features:

• Improved rendering engine
  Opera Mobile 9.7 Beta uses the Presto 2.2 rendering engine, which will also be used in the Opera 10 desktop browser. Presto 2.2 offers faster page loading, and we're excited to use this state-of-the-art rendering engine and be at the forefront of standards support with 100/100 on Acid 3.
  
• Opera Turbo
  Finally we can show you Opera Turbo on mobile! Opera Turbo accelerates the browsing experience by reducing bandwidth consumption up to 80%. Many of you will be familiar with Opera's compression technology from using Opera Mini, and with Opera Mobile 9.7 you'll get the best of both worlds - a full-fledged browser with extra Turbo capabilities. It's not the full version of Opera Turbo yet (yes, that's a Beta feature in a Beta release), but we couldn't wait to show you this cool feature.
  
• Improved Widget Manager
  Opera Widgets are small, handy Web applications that run locally on your mobile phone. Our new Widget Manager has improved usability and design, and runs independently from the browser.
  
• Gears
  Gears is a Google open source project that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser. Read more about Gears on Opera Labs.
  
• OpenGL ES
  Hardware acceleration with OpenGL ES support, ensuring smoother scrolling, panning and a more fluid user interface.