The first part of Sebastian Sell’s review looked at the Opera Mobile browser in general. Part 2 focuses on tabbed browsing and resource consumption – read on to find out how much memory you will need for comfortable tabbed browsing!
tabbed browsing
Tabbed browsing is one of the main reasons, why you will prefer Opera Mobile. It’s possible to have several pages opened at the same time, to toggle between them just tap onto the title of the tab you want to open.
Also, I thought the resource consumption with more tabs opened would be interesting. Read the details in “Opera resource consumption”.
Opera settings
The settings of Opera Mobile can be found under Menu –> Tools –> Settings. In the first tap “General” it is possible to change the home page which should load up every time the browser is started. The “Identify as” option can be set to “Desktop computer” or “Handheld device”. To see the difference, try to visit “www.pdassi.de” in “Handheld device” mode first, then in “Desktop computer” mode. In the first case, the version which is optimized for mobile devices will be displayed, in the second you get the default, for desktop computer optimized page.
Opera comes with a build-in pop-up blocker, which can be either enabled or disabled in the settings. To clear the browsing history, cookies or cache, just navigate to the “History”-tab in the settings and hit the desired button. The cache size can be set here too, by default, it’s 8000 KB. The security protocols (SSL2, SSL3, TLS1) can be disabled in the “Security”-tab, they are by default enabled (recommended).
In the misc. settings tab, JavaScript, Plug-Ins, animations and cookies can be disabled. If Opera should be your default browser for opening web pages, just check the “Set Opera as default browser” checkbox if it isn’t already. Grab and scroll can either be enabled here or on any page, through the context menu (long tap onto the web site).
Opera resource consumption
I measured the RAM consumption with DinarSofts MemMaid:
| program | memory consumption in kb | notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pocket Internet Explorer | 321.76 kb | one page opened (default PIE start page) |
| Opera Mobile 8.65 | 135.90 kb | one page opened (default Opera start page) |
| Opera Mobile 8.65 | 2×287.85 kb = 575.70 kb | two tabs opened (default Opera start page and Google) |
| program | time to load www.pocketland.de | internet connection type |
|---|---|---|
| Pocket Internet Explorer | 15.33 sec. | ActiveSync |
| Opera Mobile 8.65 | 12.42 sec. | ActiveSync |
| Pocket Internet Explorer | 09.57 sec. | Wireless LAN, signal quality: best |
| Opera Mobile 8.65 | 10.50 sec. | Wireless LAN, signal quality: best |
note: this test was done with DSL 2000 KBit/s and the following settings: PIE: One Column, Text Size = Medium, High Resolution *not* enabled; Opera: Desktop Mode, High Resolution enabled, Zoom = 90%
Startup time Opera: 15.87 sec.
Startup time PIE: 04.75 sec.
Security
Opera supports the security protocols SSL 2, SSL 3 and TLS 1. I had no problems with any web site which requires SSL like Google Mail, or Avant Go. Unfortunately, the Opera Password Manager “WAND” is not included in the mobile version of Opera. Maybe they will add this feature in upcoming versions.
pros and cons
+ good CSS support
+ Flash Player compatible
+ “grab and scroll” feature
+ tabbed browsing
+ PIE Favorite Importer
+ full screen mode
- sometimes slow page rendering
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