What is a Web browser? Wikipedia defines it as:
"A Web browser is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network"

Opera Mini does the exact same thing except that it uses a remote server to pre-process Web pages before sending them to your phone. Web content is compressed to reduce the size of data transferred, enabling handling on simpler phones and creating fast browsing at low costs. I've been playing around with Opera Mini (Java ME-J2ME version).

Opera is the Norwegian company who make the browser of the same name for many platforms. All their browsers have a technology they call small screen rendering™ which reformats full desktop web pages for display on tiny phone screens. The reformatting works remarkably well - although reformatted pages aren't likely to be as easy to navigate as well designed mobile pages.


The Java ME part means that you don't need a smartphone to run Opera anymore. Most phones made in the last three years support some version of Java ME (which was called J2ME until Sun renamed it this year). Non-Smartphones generally don't have the processor power and RAM to do all the manipulation that is required to implement small-screen rendering. Opera Mini gets around this by doing the reformatting as a web service, the Opera server resizes images and optimizes the page for the phones screen size and then compresses the resulting mobile page into some sort of binary code which the Java ME app on the phone can easily render. The result is that pages load quickly even on old slow phones. This also means that Opera can easily start charging and shut the service off for anyone who doesn't want to pay the price. But for now at least it is completely free.

Watch the video below to get started:



For more Opera Mini Videos Click here