Opera Mini 5.0 Download

The Opera Mini mobile phone browser has long been a favourite with us. Ever since its release, in 2005, Opera Mini has been offering a quality option for web browsing on our mobile phones. Back in 2005, web browsing on a phone was still a difficult affair. Mobile web browser technology was crude, when compared with the options available today, with manufacturer options pre-installed on mobile phones being very ropey, most often dividing a web page into three strips, then listing them one above the other. So, for example, if you went to the Yahoo website, and wanted a link that is usually placed on the right hand side of the screen, you would have to scroll down through the whole left hand side, followed by the whole middle of the page, followed by the right hand side of the screen. Time consuming, annoying, frustrating, and very poor in terms of user experience.

Then along came Opera Mini, and suddenly the world of the web was available to browse in an instant on a mobile phone. Over time the software has developed, and it is the one application I always install on all my non-Smartphone handsets. One thing that really makes Opera Mini such a joy to use is the server side compression technology used when web browsing. This strips out all the unnecessary data from a web page and compresses what is needed to ensure a smooth, fast delivery. Even on a non 3G handset, most web pages tend to load fast enough to ensure a pleasurable browsing experience, and with the majority of mid range handsets offering at least a QVGA specified screen, web pages look readable, and are easily navigated. A particular favourite feature is the option to view the whole web page as a thumb nail, which can be browsed over with a red square, and once the part of the page you want to read in detail is covered, Opera Mini will zoom into that particular area. It is little features like this that when added up offer mobile web browsing at its best.

Recently, Opera launched the latest version of the Opera Mini browser, Opera Mini 5.0 beta. This has produced some new features, and overall enhanced the browser to offer something that wouldn’t be out of place on most PC’s. Once installed, one of the first things you will notice is the old style shortcut list of bookmarks has been replaced, with a three by three row of squares. Each of these squares will capture a small thumbnail image of the website saved, and it looks very effective. Image presentation, when well done, is always preferable to rows of text!

One of the nicer new additions to Opera Mini 5 is the possibility of having tabbed browsing, much the way a desktop browser offers. Opening a tab is simple enough, and it can be very useful to have a couple of pages open on a phone, particularly if you want to check information from two sites simultaneously.

When browsing a web page, you can highlight text easily to enable you to copy it to another field, maybe highlighting an address to paste into the browser address bar or similar. You just hold down the centre of your phone’s navigation key, which brings up a text box that informs you to place the cursor where you want to start highlighting, and then press the start option. Once you reach the point where you want to finish, press use and you will be given the option to copy the text or to start a search, if you wanted to check out a particular keyword.

There are many settings in the menu that can be tweaked to allow you to set Opera Mini to your own requirements, such as changing the font size (there is a very small option for those with good vision, going up to a large font option). You can choose whether to have images loaded when browsing, and also what quality those images are. The default is on, with images set to low quality. The higher the quality, the slightly longer each page will take to load. There is a mobile view option, which lets you see web pages in one long column, which I can’t imagine anyone would want to choose, and there are also settings for changing the screen orientation from landscape to portrait, and also a full screen option too, which allows you to see more content on display. The privacy menu allows you to set options for cookies, and you can also delete browsing history or stored passwords. In the advanced menu you find settings for controlling those annoying pop ups, a network testing option and you can also choose which folder you use to store saved web pages on your phone.

Opera Mini 5.0 is still in beta, so there may be a few bugs, although I haven’t experienced any issues since I installed the app. One of the good things with Opera is they have an active user community, where any issues can be talked about, through the forum. And generally Opera are very quick to implement any changes when needed. But what we have with Opera Mini is a powerful browsing option for the millions of mobile phone owners who do not have a Smartphone, but may be wondering just what all the fuss is about accessing the web on a phone. If a first time user was fortunate enough to be browsing via Opera Mini 5.0, they would see just how good mobile web browsing can be. Check out the video from Opera below for more details and a run through the improvements.