Opera Mobile 10.1 “Silent” Update For Symbian^3

Opera Mobile10.1 (1169) on N8 With 6 Open Tabs

Opera quietly released a new build of the Opera Mobile 10.1 Beta for Symbian today. It’s version 10.10 (1269)  and is targeted specifically at Symbian^3 devices like the N8 and C7. It fixes a bug where Opera would crash when using the Nokia keyboard if predictive text was enabled and you pressed the on-screen right arrow key.  There are several other bug fixes, all of which are related to text entry on Symbian^3.  The changelog lists the following fixes from from 10.1 final (all fixes are Symbian^3 specific):

  • Predictive text can be activated while writing passwords
  • Fixed crashing when typing in password dialog using Sougou keyboard
  • Fixed crashing when using predictive text and system keyboard
  • Fixed issues with spelling keyboard not disappearing
  • Fixed issues with backspace deleting all text in edit field when text isn’t selected
  • Fixed bug where previous virtual key searches do not highlight correctly

These are worthwhile fixes. Being able to use the Nokia keyboard without crashing Opera is welcome. Before this release you were forced to use the built in Opera keyboard or risk a crash.  The Opera keyboard is actually pretty nice, it even gives you a very usable portrait mode QWERTY.  But it’s hard to correct typos when entering URLs with the Opera keyboard because it lacks cursor keys. That wouldn’t be a problem except that Opera uses a tiny, non-zoomable font for the URL field which makes it difficult to accurately position the cursor by tapping.

The lack of a decent browser is my biggest disappointment with Symbian^3.  Opera Mobile, with its support for geolocation and blazing Javascript performance, comes close to being the ideal browser. But it has a number of usability issues on Symbian^3 (hard to  toggle radio buttons and checkboxes, too small text at default zoom, hard to use zoom controls and zooming that breaks text reflow on many sites). I’m really hoping for a major Opera Mobile Symbian release before too long that finally delivers a browser for Symbian that rivals the Android and iOS ones.

Related posts:
New Opera Mobile 10.1 Is Fast and (Mostly) Stable On the N8
Opera Mobile 10.1 Symbian Beta 2 – Much Improved JavaScript Performance
Opera Mobile 10.1 With Location Support For Symbian and Maemo

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