Opera Mini for Android Updated to Version 7.0

Opera Software has updated the Android version of its Opera Mini proxy browser from 6.5.2 to 7.0. If you have used the Opera Mini “Next” Beta version, then 7.0 should look familiar. According to Opera 7.0, incorporates the all new features added to Opera Mini Next plus some unspecified bug fixes. Here’s a list of the new features in 7.0. Full hardware acceleration of the Mini application has been implemented. On Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) devices, URL sharing via NFC … Continue reading

Opera Mini 7.0, aka “Next” – What’s New, What’s Improved and What’s Broken

Opera Mini Next on Android: 15 Speed Dials and pixel perfect rendering of the WSJ Yesterday Opera Software released new versions on Opera Mobile for Android 1.6 and up and for Symbian 3rd edition and later as well as new Opera Mini releases for for iOS (iPhone and iPad), Android 1.5 and up, Symbian 2nd edition and latter, Java ME and BlackBerry OS. In this post I’m going to focus on the new Opera Mini release. Read on for detailed … Continue reading

New Touch-Friendly UC Browser 8.0 Beta for Java ME

UC Mobile released a new version of the UC Browser for Java ME last week. It’s 8.0 Beta and is notable for its brand new, much more touch friendly user interface. This is Beta release, a number of features that were in previous UC Browser versions are not implemented. Here are the ones I noticed No save page or open saved pages options. No share to Twitter or Facebook option. No way to view the copy/paste clipboard. No option to remember the last page on … Continue reading

Download the New UC Browser 7.5 Beta For Java ME

Yesterday China’s UC Mobile Ltd released a Beta of the a 7.5 version of the UC Browser for Java ME. It’s available in English, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Russian, but only from the UC Forum. Registration is required to download from the forum and I experienced problems installing the app via my phone’s browser using the Jad file links in the forum post.  There was a minor formatting issue with the files.  I posted direct links to corrected versions of the … Continue reading

Bolt Browser 1.5 Review – Great Rendering, Copy/Paste, But Still a Few Warts

I’ve been using Bolt’s new 1.5 release for a few days now and here are my impressions. In general Bolt works very well on main phone, a Nokia N95-3.  In fact, this is the first version of Bolt that I consider good enough to use as my main browser. Here are my likes and dislikes. Likes: Excellent page rendering.  Most sites look great in Bolt, fonts are particularly attractive, clean looking and readable.  Unlike Opera Mini (image below, left), italic … Continue reading

Bolt Browser 1.5 Released

Today Bitstream released version 1.5 of their free Bolt browser. Bolt is a Java ME app and runs on most phones. If you are using a previous version of Bolt should be  prompted to update as soon as you try to visit a web page. If you don’t already have Bolt, visit boltbrowser.com with your mobile browser or boltbrowser.com/download.html using a  PC browser and follow the prompts to download and install Bolt 1.5. With 1.5 Bolt loses its Beta label … Continue reading

Opera Mini 5 Beta – First Impressions

Early this morning Opera Software released the long awaited  first Beta of Opera Mini 5.  You can get it by pointing your phone’s built in browser at mini.opera.com/next.  Or download the .jad and .jar fles or the Blackberry .alx and .cod to your PC for side loading from opera.com/mini/next/download/ Opera Mini 5 is bigger at 221 KB than its 125 KB predecessor and uses more phone resources.  Given the new features this is to be expected but it also means … Continue reading

Speed Test – Opera Mini, Bolt, Skyfire and UCWEB

About a month ago All About Symbian‘s  Rafe Blandford published an extensive set of browser speed test results. Rafe compared page load times for ten well known US and UK sites using eght different Nokia S30 3rd and 5th editon devices plus the T-Mobile G1, iPhone 3G, Skyfire and Opera Mini.  Latter Matthew Miller at Smartphones and Cellphones updated Rafe’s data with numbers for the iPhone 3GS and Opera Mobile 9.7.  Rafe and Matthew’s data showed that smartphone browsers are … Continue reading