Opera Mobile 9.7 Turbo browser: Coming soon

Opera Mobile 9.7, the latest browser for mobile phones and hand-held, portable devices is here. Opera announced that the Opera Mobile version 9.7 will be launched at the CTIA Wireless conference in Los Angeles.

The new Opera Mobile 9.7 will support AJAX and Flash web technologies, which means you will be able to watch Youtube and Facebook on the Opera Mobile 9.7 on your mobile phone. Most of the mobile phone browsers available currently — whether it be on Nokias, iPhones or BlackBerrys — are unable to display these websites. Many of them cannot even display rich HTML and Javascript. Except for Skyfire, there are hardly any mobile browsers which can display video.

The Opera Mobile 9.7 uses a Presto 2.2 rendering engine, which is the heart of this mobile internet browser. Presto 2.2 is the same rendering which also comes with Opera 10.0, which is the desktop version. The browser also uses the Turbo compression technology, claims Opera.

Opera said that the Opera Mobile 9.7 browser helps faster data downloads, thereby easing the pressure on carriers. Data compression on Opera Mobile 9.7 browser, claims the company, is 80%, which is much higher than comparable mobile internet browsers.

Opera calls the Mobile 9.7 version of the browser as a “server-accelerated browser”. Effectively, this means that some parts of the webpage rendering will be done by Opera servers, thereby reducing the pressure on the mobile phone’s hardware capabilities. Opera calls this Opera Turbo.

“Today, carriers and mobile phone manufacturers are looking for solutions that take advantage of existing technologies and investments while trying to maintain a high level of service for their customers. Opera Mobile 9.7 with Opera Turbo gives our business customers to ability to bring a rich Internet browsing experience to their mobile device and to the end-user without having to allocate new resources and development costs,” Opera said in a press release.

In an online video demonstration, Opera shows that Opera mobile browser 9.7 with Opera Turbo renders pages faster than an Opera mobile browser without the Opera Turbo, and much faster than a mobile Internet Explorer browser.

Opera Mobile 9.7 will be available only on Windows Mobile and Symbian platforms with touchscreen phones. It is widely rumored that Opera may announce a partnership with one of the carrier service providers at the upcoming wireless meet.

This would mean that carriers, which sell the cellphones, would preload the phones with the Opera Mobile 9.7 prior to selling them. This brings an instant, captive market for Opera, which has so far relied on free downloads to push its browser. This can also increase the competition with upcoming mobile browser Mozilla Firefox Fennec and the iPhone Safari browser, all of them targeted at the touch screen mobile user.

Opera claims that the Opera Mobile 9.7 is fully compliant with ACID standards, scoring 100 out of 100. The Opera Mobile 9.7 will feature Opera Widgets, small web applications that run locally on the mobile phone.
The Opera Mobile 9.7 beta also supports Google Gears and the Open GL ES standard for graphics acceleration.

However, we feel that Symbian and Windows Mobile support for the browser is a half-hearted attempt at expanding the mobile browser market, which Opera is anyway dominating now. Opera will need to launch the latest version of its mobile browser for Blackberry, iPhone and Android platforms, before it can claim to be the undisputed king of the mobile phone browser market. This is not difficult for Opera, since its mobile browser is already used across hundreds of different mobile phones.

Besides, we hope the Opera Mobile is out of the beta stage fast. Opera Mobile made its first appearance two years back as the Opera Mobile 9.0 beta; after which it has passed through the 9.5 beta, 9.5x beta and now, the 9.7 beta. Though the browser keeps getting better and smoother with every update, we hope Opera releases the full-fledged Opera Mobile browser for cellphones soon.

With the launch of its latest free mobile internet browser, Opera plans to unleash an advertising campaign, the first time it will be doing so. Opera plans to advertise the Oepra Mobile 9.7 Turbo on hoardings, buses and other outside avenues. The promotion is a direct challenge to Microsoft’s mobile Internet Explorer, which is still not available outside the Windows platform, while free mobile and desktop browsers keep cropping up by the dozen, based on open source technologies.