the webthinking blog

Finally a full-blown browser for a not so Bold BlackBerry! Last week Opera ASA announced the Opera Mini (beta) 4.2 browser. It has been a while since the 4.1 release, I was eager to try it out.

Beautiful! It has WiFi support, download speed is pretty good. Opera has added couple of North American hosted proxy servers – this should help as well. Get this: because of the WAP/socket/http support, I’m able to surf on a BlackBerry email plan only, when WiFi is not available. Yes, I had to disable the firewall, but that’s okay for now.

The address bar can be used for web search, much like your desktop browser.

Bookmarks – now this is a real plus. You can manage your bookmarks on the web, if you have an account with My Opera, and get them synchronized OTA on your BlackBerry client.

RSS feeds are here. I’m using Goggle Reader as my main feed manager, accessible from anywhere, but this mini browser has a built-in feed reader. Comes in handy.

There are two browsing options: mobile view and classic view. Javascript and CSS are rendered quite well. I like the magnifier option to quickly scan a page.

Best use so far? Being able to access my JahJah account and address book to initiate long distance (read international) calls without paying Rogers a fortune. I also have an unlimited incoming voice plan, so web initiated calls are a super-bonus in this case.

Go get the Opera Mini 4.2 now. It is supposed to work well on other smart phones.

See it in action.

Later edit: yes, I have switched to the iPhone 3GS in the mean time. Love it!