Opera Mini 3 launched!

29.11.2006 | Filed Under Games, Java

Tags: browser, free, mobicritic, mobile, moblogging, Opera-Mini, review, rss, soft, Software

Since yesterday, there is a NEW mobile browser in town, and its name is Opera Mini 3. (according to GoogleOperatingSystem)

I’ve already introduced you to Opera Mini 2, which is great as it is already. But Opera Mini 3 is even better, trying to be a One-Size-Fits all mobile program. Therefore it includes most of the things you’d ever wish for: a great and improved Mobile Web Browser, a mobile RSS news reader, and a photo-blogging (mo-blogging) feature (unfortunately restrained to posting only to myopera blogs).

I just installed it on my mobile phone, and I haven’t got to play with all its features yet. However, a list of the cool new features is to be found here OperaMini.com/features . Among other things, I’m glad to discover key shortcuts for the all-to-common Forward/Backward commands; the RSS reader seems pretty nice as well. Along it, the browser provides various downloadable skins, and various pluggable search-engines to replace the default google search one.

But the greatest improvements lie in the browsing field. According to the operamini website, there is a cool page fetching mechanism, where page contents are grabbed by an external server which compresses them for further streaming to the mobile browser:

Mini technology

Opera Mini uses a remote server to pre-process Web pages before sending them to your phone. Web content is compressed to reduce the size of data transferred, enabling handling on simpler phones and creating fast browsing at low costs.

Also, the page contents has a new feature called “Content folding” that makes common page fragments such as page navigations or lists automagically fold in order to save screen space. Pretty neat, isn’t it?

All in all, this new version looks like a MUST HAVE for any mobile connected fellow. The list of updates is huge, and the new opera mini website is a handful of resources. I’ll keep you updated with any additional conclusions I’ll get after extra usage.