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Opera Mini 5 Beta Now Available With New Touch Keyboards

By The Guru on September 16, 2009

This morning, Opera launched the first beta of Opera Mini 5. If you’re not familiar with it, Opera Mini is a java-based mobile browser that works on nearly any phone in the market. Opera Mini is a server-based browser, which means that it passes all of the traffic through Opera’s servers to compress and optimize it, before delivering to your phone. The benefits of this include much faster load times and better support for full desktop browsing than built-in browsers (which do all the processing on the phone itself).

Opera Mini 5 brings a host of new features to this powerful and popular little browser, including tabs, the ability to copy/paste, and improved font rendering. It works on all Symbian-powered devices, including the newer touchscreen ones, like the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic or the Nokia N97, with full touch support. You can read an awesome rundown of the Opera Mini history and review of this new version over at IntoMobile, written by our friend Stefan (who uses Opera Mini like it’s going out of style).

One thing that EverythingBlaxx, on Twitter, pointed out is that the onscreen QWERTY keyboard inside of Opera Mini 5 is miles ahead of the standard S60v5 one. You can see comparison photos below. This is an interesting discovery, and leads me to wonder if 3rd parties could write standalone replacements for the existing text input methods on the Symbian-powered touchscreen phones? The portrait QWERTY keyboard could use some major reworking, and I’d like to see predictive input added to the fullscreen one, too. Is this possible?

Default:

Default QWERTY keyboard

Opera Mini 5:

Opera Mini 5 QWERTY

Default Portrait QWERTY:

Scr000027

Opera Mini 5 Portrait QWERTY:

Opera Mini 5 Portrait QWERTY

What do you think? Did Opera do a better job on these mini keyboards?

You can download the new Opera Mini 5 Beta at http://m.Opera.com/next

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The Guru

The Guru, aka Ricky Cadden, started Symbian-Guru.com in November 2006, out of his excitement for the S60 3rd Edition version of Symella. The Guru has used Symbian devices since the Nokia 6620, and is known for his perspective as a power user. You can follow The Guru on Twitter at @Rcadden

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  • http://www.imPHOreal.com/ imPHOreal

    Definitely looks much better and I’m excited to try it out. It looks more “up-to-date”. Great post; I’ll link it on my site.

  • http://www.imPHOreal.com imPHOreal

    Definitely looks much better and I’m excited to try it out. It looks more “up-to-date”. Great post; I’ll link it on my site.

  • http://claudioebola.wordpress.com/ claudioebola

    Nice app!!!
    Now i can use opera in my Samsung Star!!!
    Tnks Guru!

  • lastrider

    If only the default browser was this good. Opera certainly looks amazing but its still lacking in terms of displaying web pages properly specially with Java and Flash.

  • http://claudioebola.wordpress.com/ claudioebola

    Nice app!!!
    Now i can use opera in my Samsung Star!!!
    Tnks Guru!

  • lastrider

    If only the default browser was this good. Opera certainly looks amazing but its still lacking in terms of displaying web pages properly specially with Java and Flash.

  • Rohan

    Im not sure I understand.. How is the Opera keyboard better ?

  • Rohan

    Im not sure I understand.. How is the Opera keyboard better ?

  • http://www.symbian-guru.com/ TheGuru

    It’s completely up to the user which is better. I like the Opera one better because it uses less of the screen. I also like the layout a bit better.

  • http://www.symbian-guru.com TheGuru

    It’s completely up to the user which is better. I like the Opera one better because it uses less of the screen. I also like the layout a bit better.

  • Amir

    You can copy and paste but there’s no clipboard manager like in UCWEB browser. Hopefully they’ll put one in in the final version

  • Amir

    You can copy and paste but there’s no clipboard manager like in UCWEB browser. Hopefully they’ll put one in in the final version

  • Merlin

    This version sure looks good, plenty of welcomed improvements… What a pity I hate Java apps on my S60 devices :(. It didn’t bother me when I was still using Sony Ericsson feature phones, but on S60, Java apps sure looks inelegant (slower to launch, more resource hungry and more battery consuming than native S60 apps). I don’t think I will even bother to try it actually…

    On a side note: date and author name back on top of articles, hell YEAH !!! Thanks for listening to the complaint Ricky, got yourself a happy again S-G reader here :p.

  • Merlin

    This version sure looks good, plenty of welcomed improvements… What a pity I hate Java apps on my S60 devices :(. It didn’t bother me when I was still using Sony Ericsson feature phones, but on S60, Java apps sure looks inelegant (slower to launch, more resource hungry and more battery consuming than native S60 apps). I don’t think I will even bother to try it actually…

    On a side note: date and author name back on top of articles, hell YEAH !!! Thanks for listening to the complaint Ricky, got yourself a happy again S-G reader here :p.

  • http://iUnlock.com/ Adam@iUnlock

    Ricky, thanks for changing the post meta-data layout. It looks nice.

  • http://iUnlock.com adam@iunlock

    Ricky, thanks for changing the post meta-data layout. It looks nice.

  • valahianss

    Seems is a major update for the touchscreen phones.Changing the interface is a good thing.Wait to a final version.

  • valahianss

    Seems is a major update for the touchscreen phones.Changing the interface is a good thing.Wait to a final version.

  • http://www.symbian-guru.com/ TheGuru

    Glad you like it. :)

  • http://www.symbian-guru.com TheGuru

    Glad you like it. :)

  • David

    love the interface, but i can’t sync with opera & w/50+ bookmarks & trip coming up, gonna stay w/4.2 til this feature is added

  • David

    love the interface, but i can’t sync with opera & w/50+ bookmarks & trip coming up, gonna stay w/4.2 til this feature is added

  • nick

    the keyboard in the new opera may be a bit better laid out but that doesn’t matter to me because i’m USED to the default keyboard!! change ia bad.

  • nick

    the keyboard in the new opera may be a bit better laid out but that doesn’t matter to me because i’m USED to the default keyboard!! change ia bad.

  • http://twitter.com/nicoduck nico

    ouh, hm
    well, it’s quite nice on touch ui but on non-touch it is crap
    i more likes the old school menu and start-sreen of opera on my e71, the navigation is heavier and there is less information (in the menu) on the screen so there is more scrolling -.-

    hopefully they will put back the old skin in the final version for the normal phones without touch

  • http://twitter.com/nicoduck nico

    ouh, hm
    well, it’s quite nice on touch ui but on non-touch it is crap
    i more likes the old school menu and start-sreen of opera on my e71, the navigation is heavier and there is less information (in the menu) on the screen so there is more scrolling -.-

    hopefully they will put back the old skin in the final version for the normal phones without touch

  • Idan

    Hi Ricky. Now that you show you are reading complaints and responded by moving your name to the top of the post how about optimizing your site for opera use. Or better yet try going to your full site with opera mini 4 or 5 and see for yourself. Since your layout change last week everything than the top post is superimposed on top of eachother and it looks like crap to be honest. I know the mini site works fine but come on, with opera mini compression you really dont have to worry about our bandwith lol. Fix it please. Thanks!

  • Idan

    Hi Ricky. Now that you show you are reading complaints and responded by moving your name to the top of the post how about optimizing your site for opera use. Or better yet try going to your full site with opera mini 4 or 5 and see for yourself. Since your layout change last week everything than the top post is superimposed on top of eachother and it looks like crap to be honest. I know the mini site works fine but come on, with opera mini compression you really dont have to worry about our bandwith lol. Fix it please. Thanks!

  • http://www.symbian-guru.com/ TheGuru

    Thanks again for the feedback. An overhaul of our mobile site is on the books to be completed soon. I’ll look into this Opera Mini issue, but looking at our traffic for the past 30 days, only 0.17% of our visitors used Opera Mini to access the site.

  • http://www.symbian-guru.com TheGuru

    Thanks again for the feedback. An overhaul of our mobile site is on the books to be completed soon. I’ll look into this Opera Mini issue, but looking at our traffic for the past 30 days, only 0.17% of our visitors used Opera Mini to access the site.

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