Opera Mini 4 Beta Review (Verdict: Mobile application of the year)
Posted by Stefan on Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 5:24 am under Applications
It is finally here, I’m not teasing you, the beta of Opera Mini 4 (Dimension) is available right now! Congratulations to the Opera Team, I love your little iPhone ad parody.
Point your browser to http://mini.opera.com:
Opera couldn’t detect my Nokia E61i, but I know I have enough horsepower under this stainless steel body that I selected the high memory version:
Depending on your phone you will be asked to confirm the download, hit yes as many times as necessary:
Check out the icon in the lower right hand corner. Opera has just unleashed Pandora’s box onto the mobile browsing world. Full review after the break, trust me, you’ll want to read it:
Opera Mini starts by asking you to test your network connection:
This process takes a while, about 20-30 seconds. You only have to do it once so don’t worry about it:
Once that is over you’re presented with a summary of all the new features and the EULA:
This is not a feature complete beta, which usually I would wave my finger at, but this browser more than makes up for it. What does the start page look like?
Nice and clean, in Opera Mini 3 you were able to select what search engine you could use, I hope they bring that back. This is what hitting the menu key brings up:
Not a lot under tools either:
Here are the setting you can actually configure:
What does intomobile.com look like on this thing? I’m glad you asked:
Just hit center button on whatever device you may have and it just zooms right inside that little box:
If you prefer the old school Opera Mini 3 style of a single column you can turn that on by just hitting 1 on your keypad, this menu pops up:
Click OK and this is what it now looks like:
Steve Jobs loves to show off The NY Times on the iPhone, here is how it looks like in Opera Mini:
While most phones don’t have the capability of being poked, you can always hit a button to zoom:
That concludes the copious amounts of screenshots portion of this review, what do I actually think about this browser? It needs to be installed on every single Java enabled device out there. The reason I now use a smartphone with a large screen is because Opera Mini 2.0 made browsing on my old busted up Nokia possible. Once you install this application you will want your next mobile phone to have a higher resolution screen than the one before it. Do you understand why I’m sick and tired of QVGA now?
Opera Mini uses a proxy server to compress the internet for you, this is the only reason I use it on a daily basis rather than the browser built into my S60 device.
Motorola, Samsung, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG, whatever phone you have is now insignificant. The full internet is in the palm of your hand thanks to Opera. For those of you without a dataplan you may not realize just how powerful it is to have the entire world in your hand. T-Mobile customers, just dial 611 and ask for T-Zones, it is less than $10/month and you get unlimited internet capabilities on your mobile. AT&T customers, dial 611 and ask for MediaNet which is $20/month last time I checked. International customers, if you are paying by the KB you have just found an application that is gold.
This is a beta and I’m going to treat it as such. Opera Mini 3.0 had themes (different colors), a very capable RSS reader and the ability to choose my search engine on the start page; I want those back. Performance is outstanding, the application definitely starts up faster than Opera Mini 3.0 ever did, the websites also render quicker.
I can’t emphasize this enough, stop living in the internet your operator lets you play in, just install this beta and enjoy the world wide web the way it was meant to be enjoyed.
June 19th, 2007 at 5:43 am
June 19th, 2007 at 5:45 am
use the services browser, not the S60 browser
June 19th, 2007 at 6:25 am
Opera mini 4 is waaay better than the build in browser in s60 and the opera for s60… the only thing that i miss in opera mini 4 is a function to save passwords/logins and a way to cataloging the bookmarks in directories (dir) when you have 80+ bookmarks it takes a while to scroll every time when you want to visit a page
June 19th, 2007 at 6:26 am
[...] Intomobile.com [...]
June 19th, 2007 at 9:42 am
did they drop the fullscreen option coz i can’t seem to find it anywhere.
June 19th, 2007 at 11:37 am
[...] Some Symbian blogs have already caught up with the news. Check out OM 4 on the Nokia E61i. [...]
June 19th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
[...] IntoMobile: “The full internet is in the palm of your hand thanks to Opera. For those of you without a dataplan you may not realize just how powerful it is to have the entire world in your hand.†[...]
June 19th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
@ nave
are you talking about the Desktop Viewing option? You can switch to desktop view through the context menu.
June 20th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Usually, ** switches to fullscreen. That’s what I do.
June 29th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
This is the best java applet on mobilephone
July 31st, 2007 at 5:00 pm
[...] email asking for input on Opera’s next version of their Opera Mini client. He must have liked my review since I came to the conclusion that there is no reason why anyone with a data plan on a phone with [...]
August 7th, 2007 at 5:08 am
Works on the Nokia E90 but a little buggy,very impressive though, cannot wait for the Main Version.Anyone know when the main version is to be released?
August 21st, 2007 at 3:27 am
greaaat!!!! I like it….thanx to Opera n to you….
August 27th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
[...] Innovation has stalled with the operators in control. In America devices are castrated beyond belief to the point that Bluetooth may just as well be called “wireless headset enabling technology.” Operators want you to send picture messages, which cost money, instead of Bluetoothing an image to your friend sitting right next to you. Game developers have to pitch their games to operators who take a slice of the profits. Verizon phones only work with Verizon ring tones. AT&T sells the iPhone. T-Mobile’s proxy is horrible, go download Opera Mini. [...]
August 29th, 2007 at 6:14 am
[...] wait to give it a try. In the meantime, if you still haven’t read Stefan’s review and Will’s sneak preview of the Opera Mini 4 beta, now may be the [...]
August 29th, 2007 at 6:37 am
[...] wait to give it a try. In the meantime, if you still haven’t read Stefan’s review and Will’s sneak preview of the Opera Mini 4 beta, now may be the time. —Related Articles [...]
August 29th, 2007 at 8:18 am
[...] Intomobile habe ich dann noch zwei Hinweise auf Reviews zum Opera mini 4 beta gefunden: Stefan’s review und Will’s sneak [...]
September 1st, 2007 at 1:57 am
This is very fast browser but can you zoom images out? Like you can in s60 browser. It’s annoying when you try to read a web page and there is pictures they fill the hole screen. This is why I’m still using the very slow nokia browser.
Hope the password saving function will be in the final version…
September 20th, 2007 at 8:35 am
Great review, but there’s one thing that stopped me from installing it: having to download it from the mobile phone. It’s 250KB worth of bandwdith i’m not willing to pay.
October 2nd, 2007 at 11:07 am
Works great on a Nokia N95……best internet performance on a phone yet!
Get it, Try it…..You’ll love it!
GeeBee
October 17th, 2007 at 11:10 am
salam
October 28th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
How to change the Yahoo search engine (to Google) from the start page??
Thanks,
Raja
October 28th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
What is the application “SCREENSHOT” which can be seen in the Applications screenshot.
December 7th, 2007 at 11:19 am
[...] all other mobile devices support. Opera Mini, a browser that we love here at IntoMobile (read review here), has just announced that they’ve ported their application to the BREW platform. Now all of [...]
December 7th, 2007 at 11:44 am
[...] all other mobile devices support. Opera Mini, a browser that we love here at IntoMobile (read review here), has just announced that they’ve ported their application to the BREW platform. Now all of [...]
December 19th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
[...] you read his ultra brief review then I would hope you check out my indepth review here. Opera Mini was what made me buy a smart phone (larger screen, higher resolution) and since then [...]
December 19th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
[...] you read his ultra brief review then I would hope you check out my indepth review here. Opera Mini was what made me buy a smart phone (larger screen, higher resolution) and since then [...]
April 11th, 2008 at 10:24 am
opera mini’s very good..i just like it..keep kunt…
April 15th, 2008 at 5:29 am
[...] for a sneak peak, but he was tight lipped about giving me further details. Opera Mini 4 Beta was my application of the year for 2007 and with the 4.1 Beta out now it is going to be hard for anyone to top that in the coming [...]
July 14th, 2008 at 10:31 am
[...] Innovation has stalled with the operators in control. In America devices are castrated beyond belief to the point that Bluetooth may just as well be called “wireless headset enabling technology.” Operators want you to send picture messages, which cost money, instead of Bluetoothing an image to your friend sitting right next to you. Game developers have to pitch their games to operators who take a slice of the profits. Verizon phones only work with Verizon ring tones. AT&T sells the iPhone. T-Mobile’s proxy is horrible, go download Opera Mini. [...]
September 30th, 2008 at 11:58 am
it cost me a whole lot to use