Opera Software has launched a new beta version of a native Opera Mini 5 for the Windows Mobile platform. Traditionally Opera Mini has been delivered as a Java Mobile application, while a more full featured Opera Mobile version was available as a native application.
What this means for people with Windows Mobile smartphone owners is that the browser will now work on older / less powerful mobiles. The native version will still have all the same features that you get with the Java based Opera Mini 5, including newly introduced features such as tabbed browsing, a password manager, and speed dial. Also included is Opera Turbo, which improves the browsing experience on Mobiles considerably by compressing data server-side and resizing images to more mobile-friendly sizes.
For Symbian and some Windows mobile owners, there are now two options from Opera for mobile browsers, Opera Mini and Opera Mobile. While in their latest iterations (5 for Opera Mini and 10 for Opera Mobile) they have both adopted the same look, feel and feature set, they are both different offerings, which is a little confusing considering that both are now available as native applications Windows Mobile.
The Opera Mini version for Mobiles, the one which was normally available as a Java application, does not feature the Presto renderer for HTML content, and instead relies on pre-rendered content delivered to it in a custom binary format, which means it is essentially dependent on Opera Turbo and wont function without it. On the other hand Opera Mobile, is a mobile version of the Opera browser, with a full HTML renderer and JavaScript engine, and Turbo is an optional feature here.
Recently Opera has also announced and demonstrated a native Opera Mini for the iPhone OS, which was perhaps more surprising. Now this version brings Opera Mini 5 to all Windows Mobile 5 and 6 phones. If the Opera Mobile browser actually makes it to the Apple AppStore, it would have reached nearly all major smartphone platforms, excepting webOS.