mocoblog

Opera is Free! But not14-day Trial for Mobiles

When Opera was giving away ad-free licences to celebrate their 10th Anniversary I used my various email addresses to get multiple licence keys. I was excited to use the tabbed-browsing, session saving and mouse-gesture innovating browser which I hadn’t used since version 6. I was happy to find that the product matured nicely, was intuitive, fast, and sports an RSS reader. Unfortunately they weren’t giving away their mobile version for free.

From the looks of it, mobile is their new focus.

However, all its other products are mobile based — browsers for Symbian, Series 60 and Windows Mobile, all for US$29 a pop. Opera Mobile Accelerator (which claims to increase the browsing speed on mobiles and reduce data traffic costs) is available on a range of subscription models, such as $18/year.
This is a great move for Opera — people are more used to paying for applications for their mobiles as opposed to their computers. The differences between browsers is also a lot more obvious on a mobile device than on a computer.

Although I don’t have a mobile device onto which I can load Opera Mobile (and Opera Mini isn’t yet available in the US), I have a feeling it is the best mobile browser out there. The latest version of Opera has a zoom feature (hold ctrl and use the mouse wheel); if the mobile version renders pages similarly everyone will need and want Opera.

Although the Openwave crapwap browser ships with many a phone, they should be concerned with this move.

Link: MocoNews.net

UPDATE: A reader kindly pointed out that Opera IS free for mobiles… you can try it for 14 days. I grabbed a Series 60 test phone here (Nokia 3650) and installed it. I must say that it is pretty sweet. Far better than any other browser I have used. With it you can “grab” any web image and save it to your phone to use as you wish.