While Opera is only used be a small minority of PC users it is still quite popular, and is becoming increasingly popular among mobile users. Well now Opera Mini 5 Beta for Android phones is available on the Android Marketplace for download.
The mobile browser is the most widely used on phones and has over 50 million users, even more than iPhone’s Safari browser. Now following on from the browser’s WinMo launch last week, Android users can get in on the act as well. Opera’s speedy browser promises to deliver a full desktop web browsing experience on your phone.
How does it achieve this? Well Opera Mini compress 90% of data on Opera’s servers before its downloaded onto your device, which means less data has to be downloaded, hence the web pages load much quicker.
It also has features that the average desktop browser user is used to including tabbed browsing, a password manager and bookmarks.
Opera Mini 5 also comes complete with its Speed Dial feature. What this is is a starting screen feature that displays the 9 sites you visit the most, for quick and easy access, saving you from typing in the URL or digging through your bookmarks.
Android users should not have to compromise when it comes to surfing the Web on their phones. Opera Mini will give Android users a fast and cost-efficient access to their favorite Web sites and services
said Dag Olav Norem, vice president of products, Opera Software.
Android phone users can download Mini 5 by visiting Opera’s mobile Website, m.opera.com/next, with the standard Android browser. And of course the Opera browser can also be downloaded through the Android Marketplace.
They have also announced plans to submit Opera Mini to the App Store, We’ve yet to hear if its been rejected, or if it’s even definitely been submitted, but lets hope that an iPhone version of Opera Mini 5 isn’t far behind as Opera claim it’s 6 times faster than the Safari browser.
