First Impressions Of Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 1
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So Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 1 is finally upon us and I was pretty excited about it. Up till now, I had been flip flopping between Opera Mini 4.1 and Skyfire 0.6 beta. Both had their pros and cons; I loved Opera Mini for the ability to give an overview of the site and double tapping on it would zoom in to a comfortable level for viewing. Skyfire was great for watching video sites like those on YouTube and I am sure there are users who prefer the custom zoom in/out. But now that Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 1, would I be giving both up for this?
That looks to be the case though it might still be too early to say. I have been playing around with the application since the announcement this morning and while this in now way is a full review, I thought I’d share my initial impressions with you.
Loving The Browsing Experience
What can I say, it’s a real pleasure to surf of Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 1. It’s smooth, it’s comparatively fast to other mobile web browsers I have encountered (including that of the iPhone’s Safari browser) and it just works nicely. Even GIF files play in the background as expected. Sure there are some bugs (which I will get to in just a short while) but nothing that can’t be fixed since the developers know about it already.
It’s also got tabs, which is not seen in many of the browsers natively (save for NetFront) which is a great feature. Sure, we’re not going to be doing intensive browsers on our mobile devices like we do on our computers but have you ever encountered a time, while mobile browsing, when you wished you could open a new tab? Well that is now possible with Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 1.
Download Directly From The Browser
Like Skyfire but not liking the fact you can’t download files directly from it? Well with Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 1, you can do just that. And you can choose where you want to save it and even open it directly if you do not want to save it. Just like desktop browsing eh. It was a tad slow on my end and I thought that my device had frozen but I guess that was the writing to device part that was causing it. Hopefully this can be taken care of in a future release.
Some Known Bugs
The bad news is that Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 1 has some bugs (it is beta to begin with) but the good news is that, the developers know about it and are working on it. For those unaware, here are some of the problems you might encounter:
- ActiveX is disabled -> Flash plugins and embedded video streaming do not work.
- Custom IME’s (like HTC’s IME) will be buggy at best, not working at worst.
- Not multilingual build — Only English is supported. Problems with other languages (and input methods) is not unexpected.
- Installation on memory cards may cause problems.
- Text wraps in overview mode.
- Fails on ACID2 test
- Main testing has been done on English HTC devices (Touch Diamond, Touch Pro, Touch, Touch Dual, Touch Cruise, TyTN and Wizard) and Samsung i900.
The lack of ActiveX (or should I say it’s disabled right now) is a real downer since I can’t watch streaming video but this is a temporary issue as the developers did say we would be able to use it in the final version.
So if you’ve turned your back on mobile browsing, why not give Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 1 a go? It looks like the browser to save Windows Mobile. Looks like other developers have their work cut out for them. Until then, I’ll be enjoying the web from my Opera Mobile 9.5.
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Hi,
I thought it will be about new features, but you are writing about tabbed browsing (which is in my Opera 8.65), and downloads (the same story).
I think it would be nicer to get some info about new features, interface redesign, etc.
Hi Zen
Good point there. I have not been using Opera Mobile for a long time now (I have actually been flip flopping between Opera Mini and Skyfire and both do not have tabs which was why I mentioned it).
That being said, I’ll definitely go into greater details over the next couple of days as I get more intensive with the app.
What do you think about it by the way?
I simply found it to be way slower than Internet Explorer Mobile (I tried loading Gmail and Twitter), so I uninstalled it again.
For me this is the same as Pocket Informant. If it would be built-in it might be great, but as an add on it feels bulky and slow.
Hi Stefan
I am not sure what you mean by slower, do you mean in terms of loading or just slow rendering? For me, speed is slightly faster than Skyfire but slightly slower than Opera Mini and by that I am refering to loading. I guess it could be because it loads the full page?
I just installed it again for ~10 minutes. Out of those 10 minutes, I spent 3 minutes waiting for the Gmail inbox site to load after logging in. After watching to an empty screen for 3 minutes, the progress bar was just over 50%. That’s pretty slow in my book!
On the other hand: a Dutch news site was loaded almost instantly and Twitter loaded faster for me this time as well. However, if it is hit and miss I will have to use different browsers to visit different websites and that’s just not convenient. So back to Internet Explorer Mobile again!
Hi Stefan
I am not too sure why it’s that slow on your device. I tried with my Gmail and it was comparable to Skyfire (under a minute to load).
Maybe you could try checking with Opera and seeing what’s causing the delay?
Assuming that Stefan is using his Kaiser we have (more or less) the same device. I have found that at times Gmail takes forever and other times it pops right up. Not sure if this is on the Gmail or Opera end of things, but Opera Mini is always OK so I suspect it is the beta.
I hope it just is the beta because then I might be persuaded to keep it on my device. Indeed I was using it on my HTC TyTn II.
I am sticking with the leaked HTC version (1522). The beta version keeps defaulting to the standard SIP keyboard, which can get very annoying. Also, there seems to be some rendering issues with the beta that are not present on the HTC version (mostly how some forum sites are formatted).
I am not sure which device you are running it with so I can’t really say much.
What I can say is that Opera version was optimized for the Diamond and if you are using it with a HTC device, it might be optimized in some ways as well over this generic version.
I think in future versions, Opera Mobile can only get better. I sure hope I am not proven wrong on this one though.
I agree with Stefan. The beta, which is of course beta, “looks” nicer than Opera Mini and PIE, but is not particularly fast. Right now, unless I wanted to do something secure like online banking, I would still use mini. But it is just beta and short of bringing devices crashing down I think Opera was going to get this out no matter what. I do, in general prefer this to Skyfire, which I also toggle back and forth with.
Hi schemenge
I do agree with you on the beta part. It’s pretty buggy and I really hope the developers can improve on it. The concept is a great one but the implementation does not do it justice right now.