While the mobile world discusses the Palm Pre’s debut and Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Opera is singing its own mobile song. On Monday, Opera launched the latest iteration of its mobile browser.
Opera Mobile 9.7 beta is now available for download. The browser comes to market with a mandate to accelerate the browsing experience for Windows Mobile-based phones.
“There are other mobile browsers on the market that claim to be faster and more Web-site compatible on Windows-based phones, but I challenge users to take Opera Mobile for a test drive and discover a new standard for speed and compatibility,” said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera Software. “Opera Mobile 9.7 leaves other ‘sluggish and painfully slow browsers in the dust.”
Opera’s Need for Speed
As Tetzchner hinted, speed is at the center of Opera’s latest release. Under the hood, Opera Mobile off-loads rendering duties to Opera servers, which frees resources on a handheld device for improved download rates and overall performance.
The mobile browser is based on Opera Turbo, a recently launched technology that enables faster surfing. Opera Turbo relies on advanced compression technology to speed up data transfer and reduce the amount of data that needs to be downloaded by up to 80 percent even with network shortcomings, according to Opera.
Opera has also integrated its newly upgraded browser engine, dubbed Opera Presto 2.2, for faster page loads and better overall performance. Opera said the rendering engine displays Web pages on a mobile phone up to 25 percent faster. This is the same rendering engine used in Opera’s desktop browser.
“It is our belief in one Web that challenges us to develop technology such as Opera Turbo,” Tetzchner says. “Not everyone owns a 3G phone, and not everyone needs to. This is why Opera’s focus is on improving our browser so that your EDGE network…