I generally use Opera mini for surfing the internet from my HTC touch. Till now I was using opera mini 4. Opera mini 4 is quite fast and simple but it lacks many useful features of modern mobile browser like tab browsing, password manager etc. I badly needed these two feature as I mostly use icicidirect site from it and after some time session times out and I have to enter the username and password again and again. Also we have to think before opening new site as it only supports single page display.

Recently I found that Opera Mini 5 beta is released!! I tried Opera mini 5 beta and here are the main features of Opera Mini 5. Download it from here.

Opera mini 5 is, same as its predecessors, J2ME based web browser. It relays the user request to backend server and all processing and computation is done on this backend. Then response page is compressed and sent to user mobile. This is why it is very quick and takes less bandwidth and

Main changes compare to previous version are,
Tabbed browsing
Password manager
Keyboard
Enhanced new user interface
Speed dial page
Auto completion of URL

One of the most significant change is introduction to tabbed browsing. A button is provided on bottom side of the screen to select or open new tabs. These tabs are very touch friendly. Menu opened for tab selection has nice animation and visuals. On press and hold on any link in webpage opens a popup menu. This menu contains a option to open the link in new tab. This is just like desktop browsing !! Also there is no limitation in number of tabs created as compared to opera mobile in which max number of tabs allowed are 3. Opera Mini 5 allows the user to open as many tabs as they want, but it will remove open tabs from memory as needed. When a tab has been removed from memory, it still appears in the tab switcher and the user just has to reload it when they switch back.

Another enhancement is built in password manager to save your usernames and passwords. This feature is very helpful to me . Whenever you enter a username and password in any website, opera mini 5 asks you to save it in password manager or not. If you say yes then next time when you visit this site they are automatically filled. If you change the password for a site for which there is already entry in password manager then opera mini 5 asks you to update the current entry or not.

Opera mini 5 has built in QWERTY keyboard which pops up whenever you select any textbox. Keyboard is nice and touch friendly but there is no option to select mobile keyboard instead of that. It is little annoying as I like my windows mobile keyboard then opera mini keyboard. I hope this will be fixed in final release.

User interface of opera mini 5 beta is very improved over previous version. Fonts and buttons are bigger and icons are touch friendly. Animation and visuals are also enhanced to give splendid view. Scrolling of the page is also improved to browse the page seamlessly.

Next enhancement in Opera mini 5 is special speed dial page. Here you can set your mostly visited websites and open that website. Quick dial page also shows thumbnails of the site you set on that button. Here again buttons are big and very touch friendly.

When you type the name of webpage in address bar then it is automatically completed by adding .com to it. I don’t find it helpful

Overall the opera mini 5 beta is big step from opera mini 4 with so many good features. These all makes web browsing convenient and fast.

Please do post your comments.