Opera is announcing today the new native version of Opera Mini 5 on Windows Mobile. Opera Mini has always been a Java based application but to improve performance on Windows Mobile, Opera decided to turn it into a native app. I just tried it for a few minutes and my first impressions are that this looks like a stripped down version of Opera Mobile 10 with Turbo mode. Page panning is smooth but the beta (only?) suffers from rendering issues (as seen in the screenshot above,) the text reflow looks really annoying and silly on the HTC HD2’s gigantic screen and frankly isn’t faster than the default Opera Mobile 9 in page loading speed (and there’s no landscape mode).
By integrating Opera Mini with the Windows Mobile platform, Opera is able to deliver an optimized version of the popular Opera Mini browser that dramatically improves performance and the overall user experience. While Opera Mini traditionally requires Java, the new Windows Mobile version does not, which means that Opera Mini will work on any Windows Mobile phone.
The Opera Mini 5 beta for Windows Mobile includes the same rich feature set as the Java-based version. Renowned features, including tabbed browsing, the password manager, bookmarks and Speed Dial, are built-in to deliver convenience while on-the-go.
You can grab it by going here or pointing you phone’s browser to m.opera.com/next
Source: Opera
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