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Review: Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 1 - an unusable piece of junk ? July 17, 2008 [Pocket PC phone] | By Edward J. R. Since Opera company is sweeping problems under the carpet - pretending that they don't exist, we are revealing them here! We have tested Opera Mobile 9.5 thoroughly, documented it in videos (see below) and we must conclude, that it is not the best mobile browser and still has many issues... It looks like users of Windows Mobile phones must wait for the new Internet Explorer from Microsoft (it is supposed to have rendering engine of the desktop version of Internet Explorer + Flash + Silverlight) or use NetFront 3.5 browser, because Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 1 still has several issues and even now, after so many months after Opera was getting feedback from users, these issues were not addressed and Opera pretends that these issues does not exist, because it is not listing them as "known issues", instead listing only the following issues as known: ActiveX is disabled — Flash plugins and embedded video streaming do not work. Custom IME’s (like HTC’s IME) will be buggy at best, not working at worst. Not multilingual build — Only English is supported. Problems with other languages (and input methods) are not unexpected. Installation on memory cards may cause problems. Text wraps in overview mode. Fails on ACID2 test. However apart from above mentioned issues that can be blamed on Beta status after all, Opera Mobile 9.5 has other problems that we don't see being addressed or recognized at all: web applications from Google not usable in Opera Mobile 9.5 while it is possible to set user agent of Opera Mobile 9.5 to some other browsers - to spoof them - it is not possible to set any browser for spoofing, and anyway spoofing by setting numbers 1 to 3 is imperfect and not working properly in this Opera browser. Opera Mobile however should be able to spoof mobile Internet Explorer too, so that users could benefit from the fact that Google is recognizing it and rendering pages with optimization for mobile phone usage. In other words by now many Windows Mobile users have been using Google applications with use of Internet Explorer that is part of Windows Mobile and thanks to Google's mobile optimizations it was very comfortable. The same applications opened with Opera Mobile 9.5 are being rendered in full desktop version what with extensive usage of AJAX leads to situation that phone runs out of memory quickly and/or pages are unreadable and unusable on small display. To showcase what we mean here is a video demonstration of this issue with example of Google Reader application (one of several web applications from Google that are extremely popular among users): some podcasts/files cannot be downloaded at all While desktop browsers like Internet Explorer for Windows XP and Vista can download files like podcasts without problems, Opera Mobile 9.5 fails in this endeavor. On the other hand NetFront 3.5 browser for Windows Mobile can download these files without any problems - inside of Windows Mobile. Here is a video that demonstrates this critical error: Opera Mobile 9.5 after installation sets itself as default browser forcibly Due to the fact that it is irreversible (in some phones, see below) without de-installation of the Opera Mobile itself, it totally breaks various other applications and use cases that rely on Internet Explorer for Windows Mobile (i.e. Pocket Internet Explorer). Clearly Opera Mobile, upon first execution should ask user and not take over forcibly! Note: in Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 1 it is possible to de-select advanced setting "use as default" but in a version of Opera that is embedded (pre-installed) there is no such option. This option should be always available and the Opera should ask the user explicitly before taking over. Opera Mobile 9.5 disables text message notifications ... or in other words another thing that Opera is doing without asking the user and not giving possibility to avoid it. Since Opera Mobile 9.5 is in beta testing phase and it is available for free, we recommend to everybody to download it from http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/download/ and give it a try nonetheless! However in this state it is not even remotely ready for commercial release. Conclusion: window of opportunity for Opera Mobile 9.5 is short because both NetFront 3.5 and new Internet Explorer with desktop rendering engine will be released in a couple of months. Instead of sweeping the issues under the carpet, Opera should address them! Post your comment (free registration is required to post, but if you register you can edit your posts later) [ 14 Comments ] << Previous Story Next Story >>

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