Another Reason Not to Buy the iPhone

Yes, although I am what some might consider a tech geek, I didn’t line up for the iPhone. But I’ve always been tempted to buy what others are dubbing as the god of all smartphones. I’ve always said to my friends that if I’m going to buy the iPhone it would only be for two reasons: Its looks and the Safari Browser on the iPhone. As you can easily crack the screen of your iPhone it is really important that you invest in getting a mobile cover that is really sturdy and is capable of protecting you mobile phone from falls and drops. For that, you have an online store for designer Mobile Back Covers in India that will provide you the very best of mobile covers.

Well, pocket pc, Blackberry, Palm and symbian mobile phone owners have another thing to scratch out of their “things to envy about the iPhone” list because Opera, a software developer known for the Opera Browser, has released the Opera Mini Beta 4.

The Opera Mini Beta 4 has been released for a few months now but it is only when I was searching for a Safari Browser compatible with the Pocket PC that I came across this nifty little program. 

What is it? 

The Opera Mini Beta 4 is a web browser for your mobile phone. It is a java based application that should work with most Nokia phones or smart phones that can run any java application. You need a data plan so that your mobile phone can connect to the internet. 

The features 

The major difference between this Beta version and the previous Opera Mini versions is the Opera Mini Beta’s ability to display the whole web page and not just a watered down version of a web page. It’s the closest thing you can get to having a full featured browser on your mobile phone. The browser loads the whole web page and fits it onto your screen. You probably can’t see any letters in this position but the Opera Mini Beta lets you choose where on the page you would want to zoom in on and the way it zooms in is just flawless. You can even change the size of the text and images so that it would lessen any scrolling on your part. There’s also a virtual mouse that looks for content and links so you can easily click on them. The best feature of the Opera Mini Beta or the previous versions of the Opera Mini is that reduces your data charges by reducing page loads, thereby delivering the web page almost 2x faster than your mobile web browser. 

What’s hot and what’s not 

If you own a pocket pc and download the Opera Mini Beta version using the preinstalled midlet manager, it’s like having the Safari Browser on your phone. You can scroll through the pages using your stylus or fingers if you’re as lazy as me when it comes to taking out the stylus from your PDA. 

The only bad thing I can say about this browser is that it’s still in Beta test which means you’ll encounter a lot of bugs. As I am a Pocket PC user, I can only browse some web pages in a few minutes before the whole application just shuts down. I’ve already reported this bug and hope that they would find a fix soon so that I can really enjoy all that the Opera Mini Beta has to offer. 

Though I’ve tried it on my Motorola E770 and so far, I haven’t encountered any bugs. I used to hate browsing the web on my Motorola phone because of its small screen that the page isn’t really what you would see when you’re browsing the internet from your pc, but with the Opera Mini Beta, I actually prefer browsing web pages on my Motorola rather than my Pocket PC. 

Since this is just a Beta version, more stuff would probably be added in the near future. Meantime, type: mini.opera.com/beta on your mobile phone browser so you can download this great application.