Opera Mobile coming to Android too
By
Kshitij Sobti |
Updated on 07-Aug-2009
The reach of the Opera desktop browser pales in comparison to Internet Explorer and Firefox; since the release of the Google Chrome browser, it has in fact fallen behind even more, and now lies 5th after IE, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.
When it comes to Opera on the mobile though, it enjoys the majority market share, with no near competitor. For the Java Mobile segment, the only option one usually has is the phone’s native browser, or Opera Mini. Opera Mobile, Mini’s more powerful counterpart has been available for Windows Mobile and Symbian, and now reportedly we will see it for Android too.
Opera Mini and Opera Mobile are both Mobile browsers developed for Mobiles by Opera. Opera Mini offers a smaller feature set, and is a Java ME application designed for some of the low power phones, it can run on any Java-capable phone with a simple GPRS connection.
Since Opera Mini is a Java application and the Android platform is primarily programmed in Java, Opera Mini had been ported to Android simply by coupling it with MicroEmulator, a library which allows running of Java ME on in a Java SE environment, and by replacing standard Java graphics to Android graphics API.
Opera’s turbo servers also ensure that you get the best browsing experience despite the low speed connections prevalent on phones. For people with 2G connections it is the only that that makes Mobile surfing even bearable.