What's New and Improved?

Several innovations make the new version of Opera Mobile an exciting mobile upgrade, and one that brings us closer to a desktop experience on our mobile devices. Here are the highlights:

• Speed Increase: The speed increase comes from an improvement to Opera's Presto rendering engine, which has been tweaked to be improve performance by accelerating the way it handles web pages. The new engine is more responsive, even if the web page uses a lot JavaScript and AJAX. This means that sites like Facebook and MySpace are entirely functional. Opera claims Presto can achieve page load speeds comparable to those on a desktop PC.
• Flash-Ready: The new Opera Mobile is Flash-ready so it can be used for viewing sites such as YouTube (mobile). However, equipment makers and wireless carriers will be the ones with the option to include Flash Lite 3 with Opera Mobile, if desired, so it will be up to them to give their customers this functionality.
• ZoomT: The addition of Opera's ZoomT technology lets you quickly take a closer look at what you want to see and then choose between viewing the entire page or zooming in to focus on the details.
• Offline Browsing: Web pages can be saved for offline browsing when you travel into a dead spot and the internet/data connection is weak or not available at all.
• Productivity Tools: New built-in tools make Opera Mobile even easier to use. These include things like a Password Manager, Address Auto Complete, Copy Text, and a Pop-Up Handler.
• Tabbed Browsing: Just like on your desktop browser, you can have multiple tabs in your Opera Mobile browser.
• Opera Widgets: (Yes, widgets!) Widgets are mini applications that sit on the mobile device's home screen and allow you to access web content with just a few clicks. Opera Mobile allows for the rapid development of web apps for mobile phones and other handheld devices so handset providers can create widgets that are preinstalled, like widgets fro weather, traffic, news, and email. Widgets can also be downloaded over the air by the user or delivered via push.
• And More: Opera Mobile 9.5 will also include features like improved text wrap, landscape mode, the ability to call a number from a web page, the ability to send a link or image via SMS/MMS, web history, and bookmarking. 

Where and When?

Opera Mobile is currently shipped on more than 100 million phones including devices by HTC, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, T-Mobile, and others. Now, a leading software platform provider, UIQ, will be working with handset manufacturers and carriers to get Opera's new mobile browser on future devices. The public beta release of Opera Mobile 9.5 will be announced separately.

For more information, check out this video demonstrating some of the new features: