Opera mini launches 10 days before iPhone

The beta version of the Opera Mini mobile web browser (codenamed
"Dimension") was launched on 19th of July, just 10 days before the release of the much hyped iPhone from Apple. The Opera Mini 4 beta has impressed fans and critics alike with its fast clean and easy to use approach to browsing. Opera Mini provides users with browsing capabilities not unlike the desktop browsing scenario with features such as intelligent zooming, power scrolling, cursor with context menu, new desktop layout view, CSS support but some features like RSS are still missing as this is still a beta version. Opera Mini 4 beta does not yet clear the Acid2 test but renders the smiley face completely and perfectly recognizable.

The beta works perfectly almost without any glitches,
formatting the text and images to fit in screen width when zoomed and even highlights the links when mouse pointer is over them. The only problems encountered are when loading AJAX pages. Google Reader opens in the browser but doesnt show any content. Apart from that there are also some issues with fonts due to the new support for Hebrew and Arabic languages.

The geek world has already gone gaga about the beta and already touted Opera Mini as the iPhone killer. In fact the battle between Opera's latest offering in the Opera Mini series and iPhone's inbuilt browser Safari is being now said to be very crucial for Apple who have not been able to capture attention like before with the latest products such as Safari internet browser for Windows and the iPhone. However it needs to be remembered that while the iPhone is a innovative product of impressive features and the Opera Mini is an amazing software application with tremendous potential for the future with emergence of mobile internet browsing.

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.

Opera Mini is a J2ME browser (Java 2 Mobile Edition) Web browser  which can be installed on any mobile supporting jar and jad files. It seeks to bring the entire internet to all mobile devices in the world so that information is always available at our fingertips. Opera Software has once again proved itself to be the world leader in cross-platform browser technologies, earlier with its desktop Opera web browser and now the Opera Mini mobile web browser.

Opera Mini can be easily installed on your phone once downloaded using SMS, WAP, or your computer. To download Opera Mini using WAP, point your phone's WAP browser to operamini.com and click on 'Download Opera Mini'. You can also download Opera Mini to your desktop computer, and transfer it to your phone using Bluetooth or USB. You can also get  SMS from Opera with the download link to Opera Mini. Enter your phone number and you will shortly receive a short text message with a download link to Opera Mini directly to your phone.

http://www.operamini.com/download/