14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that Opera Software does have something new for us to see at the upcoming CTIA Wireless 2009, held between April 1 – 3 in Las Vegas, namely a new version of its mobile web browser, Opera Mobile. The company announced recently that it planned to unveil Opera Mobile 9.7 at CTIA, and that the popular browser would sport a series of important enhancements, among which the addition of Opera Turbo has been included.
Basically, Opera Turbo is some sort of a compression engine that is able to condense data at a rate of up to 80 percent, a feature that will allow mobile phone carriers to reduce traffic, while end users will be able to enjoy a much faster browsing experience. In addition, the popular browser also comes with better standards support and developer tools, as well as with hardware acceleration, Open GL ES and Google Gears support.
Among the other features that Opera Mobile 9.7 is expected to come with we can also count the Presto 2.2 rendering engine, which can already be seen in the desktop version of the browser, Opera 10. At the same time, there will also be full support for dynamic Web technologies, Flash and Ajax being included among them (which will probably offer better access to websites such as Facebook and YouTube).
“Today, carriers and mobile device manufacturers alike are looking for solutions that take advantage of existing technologies and investments while trying to maintain a high level of service for their customers,” explains Rod Hamlin, senior vice president for the Americas for Opera Software. “Opera Mobile 9.7 with Opera Turbo gives our business customers [the] ability to bring a rich Internet browsing experience to their mobile device and to the end-user without having to allocate new resources and development costs.”
Opera Mobile 9.7 has already been showcased on a Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, and you can check out the preview below: