Rating: The PC sync facility is neat
When the announcement came that Opera’s Mini browser for mobile phones had achieved more than 20 million unique monthly users worldwide, I thought I’d better download the very latest version – 4.2.
In theory, I should have been able to work out what is exactly new in this version but it turned out that some of the ‘latest’ features had been already present in version 4.1 etc.
So I think I’ll stick with this quote from the Press blurb … “Opera Mini 4.2 beta provides a more personalized experience with its colourful selection of new skins, improved support for YouTube and other mobile video services on a wider selection of mobile phones.”
Hmm. That’s interesting because when I tried YouTube on my Nokia E66, it triggered the handset’s built-in Realplayer module to play back. So how’s that an improvement, eh? Something to do with the speed, perhaps?
Anyway, there’s good news for our American cousins because Opera Mini users in the USA and Asia-Pacific region can now experience faster browsing speeds thanks to the addition of an Opera Mini server park in the United States.
The bit that really had me intrigued was improvements to the Opera Link facility. This enables users to share bookmarks and recently-visited URLs between their mobile phones and PCs. I think the ability to share ‘notes’ as well is new with 4.2.
Anyway, it’s a worthwhile exercise to sync your mobile phone with your PC. What I did was install the very latest version of Opera for Windows – 9 point 62 – and then import my bookmarks from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
The next thing you have to do is sign in to Opera Link from both the PC and the mobile phone and the two will synchronise.
Getting my password right took me so long I didn’t get time to research another feature which is apparently in Opera Mini – mainly a custom search facility.
Opera says “Simply click on the search field that you want to grab on a Web page and then choose ‘Create search’ within your menu alternatives.” Well, I’m blowed if I could find the create search option but it must be there somewhere.
Overall, however, I like Opera Mini. It still doesn’t get round the lack of Adobe Flash on a mobile phone, however.
