Opera Software announced today the commercial release of Opera Mobile 9.5, the latest version of its award winning browser for mobile phones, Pocket PCs and Smartphones. The 9.5 version comes as a surprise, because the 9.0 version, although created, was not publicly released.

Built on the Opera's much-appreciated core architecture, Opera Mobile 9.5 has been loaded with innovative features and offers a new interface, zooming and panning for easy navigation, quick page loading and other improvements meant to provide users with the Web content and entertainment they want in a browsing experience close to a full desktop one.

The new Opera Mobile version utilizes Opera's Presto rendering engine, achieving this way page load speeds never seen before on mobile devices. The Opera Presto engine significantly improves the browsing performance by fastening the handling of Web pages. Page responsiveness is also improved on all the Web pages, even if they make heavy use of languages like JavaScript and Ajax.

Opera Mobile 9.5 is widget-ready, Web 2.0-enabled and has Flash support, being a fully loaded browser that allows users to access all their favorite sites like MySpace, Facebook and others. The Opera Widgets (mini applications that make content accessible from the device idle screen with only a few clicks) offer users a quick and easy access to information. Furthermore, the new version of Opera Mobile brings a user interface intuitive enough to be mastered in minutes, as well as the Opera Zoom feature, to allow users to "dive" into web pages and get closer to the content.

Other features of Opera Mobile 9.5 include tabbed browsing, improved text wrap, landscape mode, Web page saving for future offline access, phone number calling from Web page, link sending as SMS/MMS, image sending as SMS/MMS, small screen rendering, history, bookmarks, password manager and Web address input auto-completion.

"Opera Mobile is the result of Opera's unwavering commitment to a vision that puts a true Web experience in the hands of mobile users," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. "The improved functionality of Opera Mobile 9.5 and easy access to information has raised the bar on a more compelling mobile Web browsing experience and will further stimulate mobile Internet adoption."

A video demonstration of the new Opera Mobile can be seen on the Opera website at this address.

Opera Mobile 9.5 will be available on all important platforms, including Windows Mobile, Symbian and Linux, as a standalone browser as well as a SDK. A release date has not been announced yet, but the new version of the mobile browser will be showcased at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, between 11 and 14 February 2008.