14 DAY TRIAL // In February 2007 Opera Software announced its plans to upgrade Opera Mobile to version 9 and now Opera Mobile 9 is confirmed to be available at the beginning of 2008 or in its second quarter the latest.
The new version will bring lots of improvements, to consolidate Opera's top position when it comes to mobile Internet browsing. First of all, Opera Mobile 9 will support widgets, allowing users, operators and manufacturers to develop and personalize Web services like news, e-mail, traffic and weather information. Widgets can be opened by mobile users without launching the Opera browser, enabling direct access to dynamic content. The Intelligent Zoom feature will allow zooming in directly to a selected area of any web page. Furthermore, Opera Mobile 9 will offer multiple Windows / tabbed browsing, password manager, download manager, pop-up blocker, Bookmarks, History and many other useful features.
Opera said that an important mobile device manufacturer will pre-install Opera Mobile 9 on its devices that are to come in 2008. Also, the latest version of the browser will be featured on UIQ devices, so users of Motorola, Sony Ericsson or BenQ handsets will be able to benefit from the Opera browsing experience too.
The current version of Opera Mobile is 8.65, a version that came with new features like default Desktop Mode viewing, FlashLite 2.1 and Flash Player 7 support, bringing mobile Internet closer to what browsing from a PC means. Opera Mobile is available for Windows Mobile (Pocket PCs and Smartphones), Symbian S60 and Symbian UIQ 2.1 and can be downloaded as a 30 day trial or bought for $24 from the Opera website.
For the mobile phones that do not support Opera Mobile, Opera has the Opera Mini browser that reached version 4 and can be downloaded for free from its official website.