Opera Mobile is a mobile web browser for smartphones, tablets and PDAs developed by Opera.

History

The first devices to run a mobile edition of Opera were the Psion Series 5, Psion Series 5mx, Psion Series 7, and then Psion netBook. They ran Opera Mobile 3.6, released in 2000. Opera Mobile was ported to the Windows Mobile operating system in 2003.

Features

Opera Mobile used the Presto layout engine until version 15, which was replaced by Webkit, then Blink and supports many web standards, as well as Ajax. As of version 9.7, it can use Opera Turbo that compresses web pages via Opera Software's "Turbo" servers, thus reducing download size. Because web pages are compressed, page loading times are improved, and bandwidth consumption is reduced by up to 80%. The browser can dynamically reformat web pages for a small screen, using Opera's Small Screen Rendering (SSR) technology and text-wrapping. Opera Mobile 10 includes a "Speed Dial" feature, which allows the user to add links shown as thumbnail images in a page displayed when a new tab is opened. Once set up, this feature allows the user to more easily navigate to the selected web pages, and visual tabs, that allow the browsing multiple Web sites at one time. It also includes a password manager and pop-up handler, and it supports copy and paste, address auto-complete, zooming, history, and bookmarks (removed in Opera Mobile 15). The browser can be used by either using finger-touch, a stylus on a touchscreen or with a keypad and can be displayed in portrait and landscape mode.

Other versions

Opera Mini

Opera Mini is a mobile web browser exclusively for Android, targeted at low-end devices and lower bandwidth connections. Initially released in 2005, it was derived from the Opera web browser. In March 2012, Opera Mini had 168.8 million active users. In February 2013, Opera reported 300 million unique active Opera Mini users and 150 billion page views served during that month. This represented an increase of 25 million users from September 2012.

Opera Touch

Opera Touch is a discontinued web browser exclusively for Android since 2021. Initially released in 2018, it was created primarily for single-handed use. In March 2021, in celebration of the three-year anniversary of the browser, the iOS version was rebranded to simply Opera. It was also given a new, refurbished UI.

Opera Coast

Opera Coast is a discontinued web browser developed for the iPad on September 9, 2013, and the iPhone version followed on April 24, 2014, it was created primarily for touch while traditional browser buttons such as tabs, bookmarks, etc., are replaced by gestures. Coast was discontinued and removed from the App Store in August 2017 for an unknown reason.

Release compatibility

Awards