1 post tagged “opera mobile”

I'll be talking a little about the three main browsers available: the built in web browser, Opera Mini, and Opera Mobile.

The built in web browser:

Evil Avatar home at 50%

It doesn't handle pages that are really wide, but if you click on an article, it sorts it into the frame nicely. It handles feeds very well, and if a website has a feed it's really easy to subscribe to it with only a few button presses. The menu's very intuitive, allowing all the basic navigation options, bookmark managers, and even the ability to send web pages via SMS, MMS, email or bluetooth to a different phone / device. All the standard privacy options are here as well, you can easily clear your history, cache, cookies, and form/data passwords.

There's plenty of customization available for the default browsing view; you can set some security settings such as form data saving or allowing cookies, you can block popups, choose what to display (text only, text and images only (no flash), or all), and default font size. A few other notables are being able to disable java, and showing security warnings.

Another feature is the "mini map". If you're navigating a large site, and start scrolling around, a zoomed out view will appear with a slight transparency so you can see where you are, and you can quickly navigate to the desired area. I haven't found much use for this, and thankfully there's an option to disable this feature.

Wikipedia article at 75%

The cursor (for some reason it doesn't appear in my screen caps) is fairly intelligent; allowing you to scroll in the middle third of the page (any higher or lower and the page scrolls), and locks on to links fairly automatically.

Browsing forums is a little awkward; the text is a little cramped, but thankfully the post content fits into one screen width. If someone has their avatar to the left, then you'd have to scroll left to view who posted. It's acceptable, but nothing I'd use for long stretches of time.

The browser also handles Flash Lite. It's okay, but anything too intensive chokes it up. You're still better off with something like Mobitubia if you want to view Youtube videos, for example.

Opera Mini:

Many of the basic features of Opera Mini are identical to the built-in browser, but it is missing some of the extra options, likely because it's Java-based. It doesn't handle Flash Lite, and is missing several of the customization options such as clearing cookies.

What it does have going for it is efficiency. On websites with strange alignments, like the Wikipedia page I used on the Monarchy of England, it arranged the article vertically, so viewing all sidebars and photos requires no scrolling whatsoever.

Viewing other articles looked identical to the basic web browser, for example, the Evil Avatar article on Condemned 2. You can also choose to disable images, or choose their quality. It handles the mouse cursor and scrolling in the exact same manner of the original web browser.

However, viewing web forums with this view is very difficult; it arranges all columns vertically. Thankfully, you can turn this "mobile view" off, making Opera Mini appear exactly like the original web browser.

My main complaint with Opera Mini is that there is either no way to zoom in and out using shortcut keys, or I haven't found it. There's an option for text size in the menu, but the increments aren't as fine as the Symbian browser. It's nice to just click on the * or # keys in the Symbian browser to change the text size instantly, as opposed to having to navigate to the menu to change it.

Opera Mobile:

It works in exactly the same way that Opera Mini does in terms of the browsing experience, however it isn't a Java application, so it's much more powerful. The downside is that it isn't free.

For starters, you can reconfigure the keypad shortcuts to anything you'd like, there are at least 20 options available. There's also all the basic features here; what's viewable (yet still no Flash), security settings, pop up blocker and so on.

Conclusion:

It's difficult to pick an overall winner for web browsing. For general use, Opera Mini/Mobile seems to handle things slightly better, and even scrolls slightly smoother than the Symbian browser, but for reading forums, the Symbian browser is slightly optimal. I prefer the Symbian web browser, just because the increments in text sizes available seem finer. Opera Mobile is a very nice combination of the two, however it costs $24 USD (free trial), and it's hard to swallow when practical equal experiences are available for free.

Lastly, a few minor features that I forgot to mention. It's possible to download files with the Symbian browser and Opera Mobile. As well, Opera Mobile allows you to save images off of a website. The Opera browsers are slightly faster just because of how they're processed (feel free to read the Wikipedia I linked at the top of the article).

For those of you thinking of getting either an iPhone or one of the recent Nokia N-series, I'll add that it's a little difficult to choose between the large screen and touch interface of an iPhone, and something with a smaller screen (in terms of actual size and resolution) and using a d-pad. However, I find that the information fits on the smaller screen in a smarter fashion, and the d-pad on the N82 is fairly adequate for browsing for 20-30 minutes.