Opera Mobile for Android

rpm

rpm

Admin
Staff member
Joined
Jul 22, 2003
Messages
66,805
Reaction score
5,057
Location
Johannesburg
Opera Mobile for Android

Android has finally received its first beta release of Opera's Mobile browser. Here's what you can expect from it
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I really wanted to love it, I mean I love Opera and Android, but come on, it's 8 times the frakking size and all it does is render pages on-device instead of on the cloud and compress the output? It's just Opera Mini (not that that's a bad thing) only using more bandwidth and storage space, I was expecting more from them
 
It may be superficially similar to Opera Mini but that's a fairly big difference (rendering locally vs on the cloud).

It's nice to be on iOS, you don't worry about install size!
 
Synaesthesia said:
It may be superficially similar to Opera Mini but that's a fairly big difference (rendering locally vs on the cloud).

It's nice to be on iOS, you don't worry about install size!
Click to expand...

Haha why's that, because Stevie thinks you're not going to be able to understand big words like "bytes" or "megabytes" and so makes life so much easier by just not displaying them thus removing the problem? :P
 
No it's because you can use all your space for apps, unlike Android users who can't use their SD cards.
 
Also, "mobile operating system" ???????? :wtf:

Don't you mean mobile browser?
 
No it's because you can use all your space for apps, unlike Android users who can't use their SD cards.
Click to expand...

erm, i have no problems using my sd card to store apps, where are you getting your info from? ;P
 
Last edited:
The scrolling and zooming is smooth for a lot of sites, but on some sites, it jumps around as it tries to constanly re-render the page. Still not on par with Dolphin browser hd. The tab navigation is really nice, and I'm sure it'll be a competitor very soon, just not yet. Also doesn't have a share button, or any of the addons (like read it later) that Dolphin has.
 
ravage said:
erm, i have no problems using my sd card to store apps, where are you getting your info from? ;P
Click to expand...

Yeah, me neither. By the way how does the SD card in applephones work? Oh, right....
 
ravage said:
erm, i have no problems using my sd card to store apps, where are you getting your info from? ;P
Click to expand...
I know it's a new feature in Froyo right? Well it's still a pain because you have to manually move them there.
 
nadimm said:
... Still not on par with Dolphin browser hd. The tab navigation is really nice, and I'm sure it'll be a competitor very soon, just not yet. Also doesn't have a share button, or any of the addons (like read it later) that Dolphin has.
Click to expand...

I found Dolphin to be remarkably slow on my Dream, but Opera Mobile is very responsive. I'll agree on the extensions, but then again, I wasn't using them.

Synaesthesia said:
I know it's a new feature in Froyo right? Well it's still a pain because you have to manually move them there.
Click to expand...

Depends. I'm not sure how it actually works in Froyo (as I haven't been able to get my hands on a legit S.A. Froyo device to test it) but with rooted ROMs like Cyanogen, the moving can happen automatically or manually - you can set it to do what's best and you can go in and move the apps around yourself.
 
Is there a way to import my (laptop) firefox bookmarks into Opera Mobile? Can't find it in settings, and I don't want to use the "opera link" sync facility in Opera Mobile
 
Opera Mini ftw. Opera Mobile isn't nearly as beneficial if you're paying for data. The biggest perk of Mini, together with increased speed, is the lower data usage due to the cloud processing it does.
 
nadimm said:
The scrolling and zooming is smooth for a lot of sites, but on some sites, it jumps around as it tries to constanly re-render the page. Still not on par with Dolphin browser hd. The tab navigation is really nice, and I'm sure it'll be a competitor very soon, just not yet. Also doesn't have a share button, or any of the addons (like read it later) that Dolphin has.
Click to expand...

Is it still HTML based ? Then zooming will always be a problem. Is it not Vector based like the smooth rendering of something like Silverlight, which the WP7 is based on ?
 
? No that's got nothing to do with it. It's about the efficiency of your render engine plus the way you code your software.

The reason why WP7 is smooth is it is GPU accelerated, not because it's vector based or silverlight or anything.
 
Speedster said:
Opera Mini ftw. Opera Mobile isn't nearly as beneficial if you're paying for data. The biggest perk of Mini, together with increased speed, is the lower data usage due to the cloud processing it does.
Click to expand...

Opera Mobile has the Turbo option which can be switched on or off. Thus, Opera Mobile can be set to be like Mini, but then it has Pinch zooming and I've found it to boot up faster than Mini (weird, but true).
 
Synaesthesia said:
? No that's got nothing to do with it. It's about the efficiency of your render engine plus the way you code your software.

The reason why WP7 is smooth is it is GPU accelerated, not because it's vector based or silverlight or anything.
Click to expand...

+1

I'm also fairly certain Silverlight can't render inherently raster things like images as vectors.

If I were to venture a guess, I'd say Opera Mobile zooms the way it does to ensure smooth performance even on lower end phones. Hopefully they add acceleration for the higher end later.

Sent using MyBroadband Android app
 
Welcome to the future, enjoy Opera Mobile ;)
Us Symbian folks have been using Opera Mobile for 10 years now. Good to see Andriod is catching up.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X