Opera Mini 4.1 beta – a quick look at the changes

Opera has recently begun porting its desktop browser to various mobile devices(S60 review here, PocketPC reviews here and here) – the Palm OS was ignored so far(for various non-technical reasons not to be discussed here). However, Palm OS users that have the Palm Java VM installed on their device can use Opera Mini – can the latest beta release stack up?

As usual, a newly installed version of Opera Mini displays a page containing a quick “changelog” and the EULA – it must be accepted before the browser can be used:

Entering an URL now brings up an autocompletition tool – its recommendations are helpful even when visiting unknown URL’s:

Once an URL was visited, finding it again is really easy:

Another new feature is the integrated “download manager” – Opera Mini can now download files without forwarding them to the native browser. This has worked decently on my Treo, however, the Java VM’s permission dialogs became more and more garbled as time went by(forcing you to navigate them blindly with the 5way nav):

This “review” is based on beta 4.1.10781(downloadable here), and was performed on a Palm Treo 680 in T-Mobile Austria’s GPRS/EDGE network. The program was exceptionally stable while I tortured it a bit(not a single crash or hangup) – Blazer is significantly more troublesome to use.

In the end, Opera has clearly shown its commitment towards its mobile browser – each version gets significantly better. Opera’s excellent URL autocompleting was rated excellently in our review of the S60 version; and seeing this come to the Palm OS definitely is great! Blazer haters will be relieved to hear about Opoera now handling downloads itself – while downloading has never been much of an issue for me(I use the Nokia N71 for that as its on UMTS and thus faster than my Treo 680); I can imagine quite a few of you celebrating…

Related posts:

1. Opera Mini 4 Beta 2 released
2. Opera Mini 4.2 – beta out
3. Opera Mini 4 Beta 2 – the review
4. Opera Mini 5 gets tab support
5. Opera Mini 2 works in HiRes+ on Palm Tungsten T3