Disqus
Our Norwegian friends at Opera Software have just announced that they’ve signed an agreement with Qualcomm whereby Qualcomm’s Brew MP operating system will come with Opera Mini installed by default. Brew MP may be something you’ve never heard of, but it’s a highly popular feature phone operating systems used by multiple handset vendors, even HTC, who we all know for their mid and high end Android and Windows Phone devices. Opera Mini, another application you may or may not know about, was built specifically for feature phones. It’s a web browser that leverages servers to handle web rendering and compression in order to improve the end user experience of browsing the web on a low cost device. You type in a URL, Opera gets your request, pulls up the page on one of their thousands of servers, compresses it by up to 90%, and then finally spits it back out to your mobile phone. It’s quite popular. As of last month there were over 90 million people using it on a regular basis. It’s also quite big in America with iPhone users because AT&T’s network is … yea, let’s not go there.
There will come a day when applications/services like Opera Mini will no longer be needed, but we’re a long ways off from that. People in India are only now starting to get 3G connectivity, the same can be said about many South East Asian countries. Then there’s Africa, where operators keeps their networks alive by using generators that run off of diesel fuel. Not to mention people in Africa are paying more per megabyte than you probably do, so the opportunity to explore the world wide web is rather limited to say the least.
Either way, we love Opera Mini, especially when we’re roaming since it cuts down on our phone bills. Damn you operators!
About The Author
Stefan Constantinescu
Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.
