The beta process of Opera Mobile 9.5 can adequatly be described as a confusing failure. Worried users, delays, leaks, bugs: it was all here. However, the first public beta dropped a few days ago – what does it really change?
While starting up, the program displays a simplicistic yet cool splash screen. People familiar with Apple’s devices will immediately see whose design Opera (foolishly) attempts to copy.
The program wastes loads of screen real estate when displaying the toolbar:
The toolbars are sometimes hidden automatically:
When entering an URL, suggestions are offered in a Firefox-like fashion. Opera Mobile traditionally had excellent URL prediction – the latest version offers more information, but can display less URL’s at any given time:
Zooming in onto a web site is extremely difficult – each click increases the font size by less than half a millimetre:
Alternatively, some sort of magic tapping gesture can be used for zooming in. I personally wasn’t too happy about it:
Of course, tabbed browsing is available:
This review looked at a beta version of Opera Mobile 9.5 on a hp ipaq rx4240. The program needs 8689KB of memory and can be run from an external memory card. Stability- and speed-wise, the program performed well in my short test and can be downloaded here.
In the end, Opera Mobile 9.5 radically changes the program’s UI…but not neccessarily to the better. The iPod touch’s UI is made possible via a special combination of user expectations, hardware and software, and performs ideally only where thise assumptions exist. Emulating it on other platforms IMHO makes little sense…I’d prefer the old (S60) UI to be honest as it is a lot less annoying.
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