Mobile Phone News:

A bit back, I did a review of Opera Mini 5, and you may remember that I loved it to bits. I loved it so much that I started using it as my main web browser, replacing Opera Mobile 9.5 (which was the standard one the X1 came with), because it was faster, ever so slightly sleeker, and did pretty much everything Opera Mobile would do. I also promised you that I’d be getting the beta version of Opera Mobile 9.7, to compare that to Opera Mini 5, and now, here’s the follow-up to that original review.

I now have Opera Mobile 9.7. Let’s see how the two browsers stack up against each other.

The big, huge, massive advantage that Opera Mini had over Opera Mobile 9.5 was speed. Quite simply, Mini was much, much faster than Mobile, down to the fact that web pages were rendered on Opera’s servers, and then the resulting page was pumped to your phone. That did make it a lot faster, as all the heavy work of rendering the page wasn’t being done on your mobile device.

However, Opera Mobile 9.7 comes with a new feature called Turbo, which does the exact same trick, server-side rendering. And that means, folks, that Opera Mobile 9.7 is now once again as fast as Opera Mini. Surprisingly, I even found that with Turbo turned off, Opera Mobile wasn’t far off the speed of Opera Mini, anyway, so I reckon some serious optimisation’s gone on under the hood.

Opera Mini 5 also brought kinetic, finger scrolling to the java-based browser for the first time ever, bringing it up to date with its larger, Mobile cousin. In fact, the scrolling was smoother on Mini 5 than it was on Mobile 9.5. So the big question here is whether Opera Mobile 9.7 has done anything to improve its kinetic scrolling; the answer is, of course, yes it damn well has. The scroll is now a lot smoother, and a lot faster, and the user experience as a whole has been optimised even more, putting it ahead of its little brother once again.

I did experience some issues with the UI, such as the fact that pages wouldn’t open in new tabs if you have Turbo turned on, but since it’s a beta release, that’s to be expected. And anyway, as I say, it’s nearly as fast with Turbo turned off. Granted, it lacks the built-in keyboard that Opera Mini now has, but since I have both a hardware keyboard and SPB Keyboard installed (and expect a blog post about that app soon, too), that ain’t a problem.

So, conclusion…

If you have a touchscreen phone which isn’t Windows Mobile, or you have an older, not-as-powerful WinMo phone, then Opera Mini 5 is the best browser you can get, bar none. If you have, however, a more recent, more powerful Windows Mobile phone (like an HTC Touch Diamond2 or a Toshiba TG01), then get Opera Mobile 9.7. It’s awesome.

The final word in this blog post, however, is one about Opera Mini 5, and is aimed specifically at people who are thinking of using it on non-smartphones. It’s also something my sister found out, and it’s the reason why she’s gone back to using Opera Mini 4. The built-in Opera keyboard doesn’t, against all common sense, actually have an underscore key, and neither does the keypad on her phone, which makes it impossible for her to log in to Facebook using Opera Mini 5.

So, be aware, if you’re using Opera Mini, on a feature phone, then in your case, you may well be best sticking with the previous version…

Which do you use? Mini or Mobile? Leave us a comment and have your say!