Opera announces beta of it’s new mobile internet browser ahead of CTIA

Opera Software today announced the upcoming beta release of it’s new mobile web browser, Opera Mobile 9.7, for Windows Mobile touchscreen devices.

Opera released the following video, showing some of the functions of the new browser:

See more at: http://my.opera.com/operamobile/blog/

Opera Mobile 9.7 Beta will include the following features:

It will share Presto 2.2 with the Opera 10 desktop browser. The rendering engine will provide faster page loading

Opera Turbo is included in 9.7. The compression service improves browsing speed by reducing bandwidth consumption up to 80%.

The new Opera Widget Manager has been redesigned, and runs independently from the browser.

Google Gears has been integrated into the browser. Gears is an open source project for more powerful web applications.

What we think?

Opera 9.7 looks nice! Page compression, lower bandwidth usage and advanced page rendering will significantly increase the speed of mobile internet browsing. The problem is that Skyfire, Bolt, Fennec and IE6 all look nice as well. The next round of browser wars has started on mobile!

While Opera has stated that this version of it’s browser is intended to be released on-portal by operators and handset manufacturers, there’s no word yet on whether they have any deals with anyone. Maybe that’s what they’ll be announcing at CTIA next week!