As Opera promised last week, they’ve now released a beta of their Opera Mobile 10.1 browser for Android. Since they’re using hardware acceleration throughout the entire application, things like pinch to zoom and scrolling are insanely smooth, or as Steve Jobs would say: “like butter”. Also built in is the ability to use the same compression technology that powers Opera Mini, thereby saving you money and also increasing page rendering speeds; the new green data center in Iceland ensures that you’re not contributing to the planet’s growing number of problems. With Opera Link you can make sure your bookmarks are always in sync, and with this new beta you can even set Opera to be your default browser so you never have to load the stock web browser again!
“Android users now have a better choice when it comes to using a browser on their mobile devices,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software. “With Opera’s new browser for Android, we give users the opportunity to access the Web, using the best tools available.”
That may be true now, but Google never rests. There’s no doubt going to be an update to their WebKit browser, making it faster than anything else on the market. There’s also Mozilla, who is now in the final stages of polishing up Firefox for Mobile. In a recent review by Ars.Technica they say that Mozilla’s beta isn’t the most stable application on the planet, but the rendering speeds match and in some cases even exceed the stock Android browser.
Choice is always a good thing, and it’s good that we’re seeing on mobile what’s always been the case on the desktop. Whether you like to use Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, or whatever, you’re free to do so. To grab Opera Mobile 10.1 Beta just search for it in the Android market or type m.opera.com/next into your URL bar.