Opera Mini 3.0 Now Available

E IS mC(Square) writes "Opera Mini 3.0 is out of beta. The feature list includes RSS integration, a user-interface geared towards mobile devices and small screen size, and it's fast for relatively slower mobile data connections (with picture upload/sharing if you are into it). Requirement for using it: You must have a phone capable of running Java mobile applications and are using an Internet connection (officially supported devices are listed)."

What the hell is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

A third grader's essay on some new product? Because that's what it reads like.

Re:Possible for older low resource machines

[mr.warmth]

I never understood why people talk about old hardware like it's a retarded brother or something. You can run a hell of a lot more on a 486 than you could on your cell phone. In fact, I used to have a 468/66 that I'd browse the web on w. Win95. So why not, for example, use one of the browsers that we used back then? IE3 or Netscape 3/4? I am sure as horrid as those browsers seem compared to today's versions, they're much more complete than a cellphone browser.

And as someone else pointed out, Opera itself is very light weight and may run fine anyway.

Re:Opera Mini == spyware ?

[EvilSS]

I'm guessing someone didn't read on Opera's website about how Opera Mini actually works. They do have to use a proxy:

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. http://www.operamini.com/features/ [operamini.com]

Re:Opera Mini == spyware ?

[famebait]

The whole point of opera mini is the server. It is not just a proxy, it digests the page and adapts it to small-screen viewing before sending it to you.

There are very good reasons for this:

* The transformations are done in very intelligent ways that would be way too heavy to do on most phones in a timely fashion

* The digested page has much less data to transfer, and can be compressed in proprietary ways since the client is known. (helps both speed and cost of use).

* The client need only handle content of the format the proxy produces, so the implementation can be much simpler than a normal xhtml client. This way (along with their plain talent and experience in optimizing) they manage to get a java-based browser running on a jvm running on a phone to outperform the native one that comes with the phone. Damn impressive.

Now if you want total privacy, fair enough. You don't have to use it, or you don't have to use it for everything. But it is made the way it is for specific reason that deliver very specific advantages. After getting used to Opera mini, the standard browser on my SE is close useless by comparison.

And your ISP probably wathces you anyway; why trust them any more than opera?

Re:Who's paying?

[Ilgaz]

When you have a working real life solution in hand which is run on millions (if not hundreds of millions) mobile phones, you got something to say to companies while trying to sell these:

http://www.opera.com/products/devices/ [opera.com]

Also it seems they got deal with Google which is also effective in this product (default search engine).

Did you ever wonder why MS sunk billions of dollars in IE even while they are at court for monopoly? That was done with evil agenda, Opera supported nothing but open web standards since it was founded.

So they got "karma" enough to type mini.opera.com in my K700i J2ME 2 phone wap browser right after reading this headline.

Re:Yawn.

[Ilgaz]

It matters since

1) While MS .NET tries to rule the World, a J2ME (Java) 98 kb browser (with httpS: and RSS support) runs on billion devices potentially.

2) It uses Open Source Pike ( http://pike.ida.liu.se/ [ida.liu.se] ) to serve millions of users

3) It is another barrier for MS infested device browsing (Run WinCE browser and see)

4) It is from a small company which managed to stand against AOL and Microsoft just by supporting standards and rely on customer trust.

5) It gives people even without a WAP 2.0 browser chance of surfing web, getting information without charge.

6) Server structure handling millions of users is Linux ( easy, check http://gemal.dk/ [gemal.dk] with it)

It is bad news for MSFT and .NET freaks which couldn't release anything like this and moron websites/coders managing to break every single standard. You know why? If your site is W3C compliant, it renders PERFECTLY on Opera Mini.