Opera Mobile 10.1 Beta For Android

Opera is bringing its popular mobile browser to the Android operating system. A beta release of version 10.1 has arrived in the Android Market with Opera's signature mobile user interface and advanced features like bookmark synchronization.

 

Opera's phone browsers come in two flavors: Mini and Mobile.

The Mini version

The Mini version, which is primarily intended for feature phones, offloads much of its workload to Opera's remote rendering proxy. The Mobile version bundles Opera's Presto rendering engine and does all of the HTML parsing and page rendering on the device itself. Opera launched a port of Mini for Android earlier this year, but the new Mobile port is a welcome addition for users who want the full Opera experience on their Android smartphone.

The Mobile version

Using Opera Mobile on Android is pretty much the same as using it on other mobile operating systems. The browser shares the same intuitive non-native user interface across all platforms. The slick tab switcher allows you to select a tab by flipping through an animated stack of page thumbnails. A bar at the top of the page has text boxes for inputting an address or performing a search. Basic address completion is supported. An empty tab page will show Opera's Speed Dial interface, which presents the user with shortcuts to nine websites that they have specified.

Opera Mobile for Android comes with the browser's standard features, such as Turbo Mode and support for the Opera Link synchronization service.