Opera Mobile Browser Comes To Android

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The Norwegians at Opera have released a full version of their popular Opera Mobile web browser for the Android platform. Unlike the Opera Mini currently featured on the Android Market, Opera Mobile is a fully-featured mobile web browser and a serious competitor to the built-in browser.

The Opera Mini currently out for consumers to try in the Android Market is not the ‘real’ mobile web browser, as it’s a trimmed down version designed for non-smartphones (aka, dumb phones). Opera has finished the code on the full Opera Mobile, which has been out on Windows Mobile (and other mobile platforms) for some time.

Unlike other browsers out for the Android, where they are just modifications of Android’s default browser, Opera Mobile is a completely different browser, with a different rendering engine. Unfortunately, Opera Mobile won’t be out for consumers to try on their Android handsets yet. The software can only be included on an Android phone by the telcom providers, although, the internet crowd will likely be able to get a hacked version working soon.

Opera has been an extremely revolutionary web browser company, as they invented features that are now commonplace in our desktop browsers - like tabs and browser-side pop-up blocking, but their market share in the desktop has never been impressive. Instead, Opera has been one of the better mobile phone browsers, and their web browser also has a version that runs on the Nintendo DS handheld.