Opera presses Turbo on Mobile 9.7 beta

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 8 Jun 2009 at 09:08

Opera has released the beta of Opera Mobile 9.7 for Windows Mobile, bringing with it the company's much-touted Turbo mode.

Turbo mode speeds up mobile browsing by pre-compressing web pages on Opera's servers before delivering them to the user's handset.

Turbo mode is aimed at users on slower connections, such as Edge, and Opera claims it could help speed up browsing by as much as 80% on content-rich pages, though predictably image quality suffers. The browser's also still lacking support for Flash.

The other big change from Opera Mobile 9.5 to the 9.7 beta is a new widgets gallery. Previously the widgets gallery was featured as part of the browser, however it is now offered as a standalone download and has been overhauled with a new interface and manager.

When asked why Opera had chosen to separate the widgets gallery from the browser, a spokesperson informed us it was to prevent users losing both the browser and gallery should either crash. The company also claims that widgets have now become popular enough to warrant a separate app.

The company says it's currently working on a version of the widgets gallery for Symbian S60 smartphones.