(Click here for a larger view of Opera Mobile 9.7)Opera Software announced
Opera Mobile 9.7 in March, and showed it off to carriers during April's
CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas. A key, consumer-friendly feature of the new release will be improved support for Adobe Flash, letting users perform actions such as streaming YouTube videos, the company says, though it added that today's downloadable beta version supports FlashLite 3.x but does not yet include a Flash plug-in.
Opera Mobile 9.7 (left) and its separate widgets manager (right)
(Click either to enlarge)Opera Mobile 9.7 (above) features improved support for AJAX and other web standards, passing the
ACID3 test with a 100 percent score, the company says. It's claimed the browser will also support the Open GL ES standard for graphics acceleration, and operates with the
Google Gears API (application programming interface).
Opera Turbo architecture
(Click to enlarge)For carriers, the main point of interest may be Opera Mobile 9.7's compatibility with
Opera Turbo technology, first announced in February. The Opera Turbo architecture, depicted above, requires carriers to add a compression server into their infrastructure, but in return, reduces network congestion and provides faster web browsing by compressing data by "an average of 80 percent," Opera claims.
Opera Turbo data compression
(Click to enlarge)
Source: Opera Software
Background
The currently available Opera Mobile 9.5 first shipped in February 2008 with HTC's Touch Diamond phone, and was updated to the current Opera Mobile 9.51 beta 2 last October. Featuring a proprietary core rendering engine called Presto, the browser lets users pan and zoom around the screen with their fingers or with a stylus, and open context-sensitive menus (below right) by tapping and holding on the screen.
Opera Mobile opens pages in full-screen mode, with available context-sensitive menus
(Click either to enlarge)
Last year, Opera Software and Nvidia announced plans to collaborate on a version of Opera Mobile 9.5 the companies claim will deliver higher performance and lower battery consumption on devices using the chipmaker's ARM11-based SoCs. Devices using the Tegra processors and an "optimized" Opera Mobile are expected to ship sometime this year.
Opera Mobile version 9.51 beta 2 first addded compatibility with Opera's "widgets" architecture for creating small, portable software applications. Similar to, though apparently not completely compatible with, widget implementations being promoted by Access, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, the technology is touted as an easy way for carriers to add branded software to devices quickly.
Further information
Opera Mobile 9.7 beta 1 and a widgets manager add-on is downloadable now from the company's website, here. The Opera Widgets SDK is also available, here.
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