Opera recently released the beta version of its popular Opera Mini 5, a mobile browser for any Java capable device. The elegant & visually styled Opera 5 Mini comes with a redesigned UI to make it look like Opera 10 on the desktop, and that is obviously intentional. We review the Opera Mini 5 to find out whether you should dump the default browser in your mobile in its favour.
What’s New?
Opera Mini 5 comes with new features such as Tabbed Browsing, Speed Dialing, Touchscreen Keypad and Password Manager. What is missing in the beta version is support for RSS feeds and the ability to Sync Bookmarks.
Opera Mini 5 compresses web pages by up to 90% before they are sent to your phone resulting in faster page load times than in other mobile Web browsers. So where bandwidth is at a premium, you can save a lot of time and money by browsing in the Opera Mini. And since most of the complex processing is done on the server, Opera Mini 5 can run on relatively low spec phones.
Comparison with Webkit powered Browsers:
Opera Mini 5 features a couple of significant improvements over the Webkit based browser found on Nokia S60v5 phones such as Nokia 5800 XM & N97. Our tests on the Nokia 5800 XM showed that when we select the back option in its default browser it reloads the entire page, whereas Opera Mini reloads it from cache making browsing faster.
Secondly, the Webkit browser lack the ability to locally save a web page, an option which is available on the Opera Mini.
However, Opera Mini 5 disappoints where it matters the most. A downside of Opera Mini’s server based protocol is that since all the processing is done on the server and what is supplied to the client is a snapshot of the web page, some sites that feature heavy Ajax functionality or background scripting may not behave quite like you would expect. JavaScript is supported in a limited way and there is no Flash support either. Most static sites though will function without a problem
We tested popular sites such as Facebook, Google Reader & Cricinfo which require heavy Ajax & JavaScript support by loading them on Opera Mini 5 & the Webkit browser of the Nokia 5800.
- Due to the standardised fonts used in Opera Mini 5, the mobile version of Facebook rendered with reduced legibility both in “medium” & “small” font options, whereas the Webkit browser rendered the page with pleasing legibility.
- Due to lack of Ajax support, Opera Mini 5 could not retain Google Reader’s ability to expand a news item after clicking on a headline, whereas the Webkit browser did this perfectly.
- Lastly, Opera Mini 5 messed up the tabs of Cricinfo, which were loaded flawlessly by the Webkit browser.
Conclusion:
Make no mistake about the Opera Mini 5 beta. Its interface is stunning and is the best thing that could have happened to mid end to low end mobiles with limited memory and processing power. Here the choice is probably simpler as Opera Mini 5 is much advanced than the default browser pre-loaded on low spec mobiles.
But, Opera itself claims that Opera Mini 5 does not support Ajax, JavaScript & Flash as the browser has not been designed to handle complex CPU intensive activities. So if you have a high end device such as a Nokia N97, why would you trade the advanced page rendering of your Webkit browser for the speed & jazzy UI of the Opera Mini 5? Unless of course you are on an extremely slow connection.
We are not yet willing to dump the desktop like browsing experience provided by our Nokia 5800 & Nokia N97 browsers in favour of the Opera Mini 5. And if you are an iPhone user, then for once you will not rue Apple’s reluctance to let a competing app install itself on the iPhone!
