Wireless Tech - Opera Mobile Lands on Samsung Handsets

Hot on the heels of a new partnership with Nintendo to offer the Opera Web browser for the Wii game console, Opera has announced plans to put its browser on Samsung phones. For a browser that has a small footprint, Opera Mobile packs a lot of features, including two rendering modes ("Fit To Screen" and "Desktop Display"); small buttons and scrollbars that leave space for a Web site's content; and a customizable homepage that has a built-in search bar plus a list of the user's 10 favorite Web sites. But that's just the start.

Opera Mobile offers keypad shortcuts that users can customize; an autocomplete function for URLs; smooth scrolling; and the unique ability to open as many as four windows at once, jumping between them in the same way that users of Opera's desktop browser can switch between open tabs. Each window can have its own display settings, including custom zoom. But the best-known feature in Opera Mobile is Small Screen Rendering, in which a full-sized Web page is sliced up and pared down to fit in a phone's tiny window.

The feature is not unique to Opera, but it's a feature that Opera is known for. "There's debate as to whether reformatting approaches is a good approach or a bad approach," said Avi Greengart, a handset expert with research firm Current Analysis. "It's sort of a love it or hate kind of thing.

But in terms of reformatting, Opera does it as well as anyone," he said. Opera Mobile also filters content through Opera's servers, which compress the content's behind-the-scenes code before sending it to a user's handset. The compression leads to faster browsing and lower monthly bills for customers whose phone companies charge them by the amount of bandwidth they use.

Mobile v. Mini Opera Mobile is one of two Opera browsers for cell phones. The second, Opera Mini, is a Java-based browser for cell phones that don't come with a browser preinstalled.

Opera Mini itself is no pared-down piece of software. It lets users upload photos from their cell phones directly to their blogs or social-networking sites like MySpace and Flickr. A built-in RSS tool lets users gather and read news on the go, and secure connections make banking, buying, and using e-mail much safer.

As with all things Opera, there's more, of course. The Mini offers smooth scrolling, bookmarks, skins to let users customize its look, and a built-in multisearch feature that lets users send a query to Google, Google News, the BBC, Technorati (a blog search engine), Dictionary.com, Weather Underground, and half a dozen other sites, ensuring Opera a top slot in the mobile browser market for months -- or even years -- to come.

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