Opera Mini review

Mary Branscombe

We review Opera Mini, the most popular replacement Web browser for the BlackBerry

Published on Jul 13, 2009

The browser on the latest generation of BlackBerry devices like the Bold and the Storm is a big step forward, but you're still getting the mobile version of Web pages in many cases and when you do load a standard desktop Web page, running the scripts and rendering the page can be slow.

Opera Mini speeds things up and copes with more complex pages by shifting the hard work to Opera’s own server farm and sending you a compressed, pre-built version of the page.

Opera Mini can’t handle every Web page; it doesn’t do Flash, Ajax, JavaScript, Silverlight or other complex page elements. But it can load full desktop web pages – which means they won’t fit on the BlackBerry screen. If you want to stay with the full version of the page, you can use the 5 key to zoom in and out, moving between a thumbnail view for scrolling and zoomed view.

If you switch to the mobile view (via the context menu), you get either the mobile version of that page, if one is available, or a view prepared by Opera Mini that zooms in and moves you to what it thinks is the start of the actual content on the page (moving past navigation bars, adverts and the like). You can’t zoom in and out in mobile view (and some pages refuse to zoom on some handsets), but it’s still a useful way of getting around pages that aren’t designed for the small mobile screen.

Many of Opera Mini’s features are in the BlackBerry browser, like the Find in Page option, but with extra options. Matches are highlighted on the page and the menu switches to only show the Next option, making it quicker to jump to the reference you want. Similarly, the BlackBerry browser can save pages but it puts them in your inbox; Opera Mini saves them as links from the Start page. It also caches pages very well, so you can flip back and forwards quickly.

Typing in URLs you’ve visited before is much faster because Opera Mini will find them even if you don’t start typing with the www (so you can just type the part of the URL most likely to be different from other pages). And if you prefer not to type in URLs at all, you can use the Synchronize Opera link on the Start page to have bookmarks copied automatically between your desktop PC and your BlackBerry.

Opera Mini isn’t perfect. It’s available for several different smartphones, so perhaps that’s why the BlackBerry version doesn’t offer many familiar BlackBerry options. You can’t press space to get a period when you're typing a URL, for example, there’s no Switch Applications option on the application menu and Opera Mini blocks the BlackBerry convenience keys.

Commands are split between the main menu, the context menu (press 1), the shortcut menu (press *) and shortcuts assigned to various keys, which is confusing to start with but can be fast once you’re used to it. Opera claims to support streaming media, although what it actually does it open the link you click on using the BlackBerry browser, which in turn offers to open it in the BlackBerry media player.

If you have a BlackBerry with the latest BlackBerry OS and the new browser, you may not need Opera Mini, although some of the features will still be useful. But if you have an older BlackBerry, until Skyfire brings full browsing with Flash, Ajax, JavaScript and Silverlight to the BlackBerry, Opera Mini is a great way to get better browsing.