New Opera Mobile Browser at CTIA with Opera Turbo

Opera Software will be announcing its new Opera Mobile browser, version 9.7, next week at CTIA 2009 in Las Vegas. We'll be there to cover it, but the biggest news right now is the inclusion of Opera Turbo, a server based compression technology that is expected to greatly accelerate the downloading of web pages.



Opera Turbo works by compressing data by as much as 80 percent at Opera's server before sending it along to the mobile device. This compression not only speeds transmission of data to the mobile device but also frees the device's memory and processor resources for other tasks.

In Opera's own demonstration video using just a relatively slow 2.5G EDGE connection and three identical phones, a graphics intensive web page took three minutes and twenty-seven seconds to load using Windows Mobile Internet Explorer. The same page loaded in just over thirty seconds using Opera Mobile 9.7 without Turbo. Using Opera Mobile 9.7 with Opera Turbo, the page loaded in an impressive nine and a half seconds. While recognizing that the demonstration is self serving, if it even approximates reality it will be a major breakthrough.

According to Rod Hamlin, Senior Vice President for the Americas for Opera Software, "Opera Mobile 9.7 with Opera Turbo gives our business customers to ability to bring a rich Internet browsing experience to their mobile device and to the end-user without having to allocate new resources and development costs."

The advance to Opera Mobile 9.7 is a big jump. Even its predecessor, version 9.5, is still in beta testing but is being used by many end users despite there being a number of known bugs. The most current stable version is 8.65. It is available for Windows Mobile smartphones at a cost of $24.00 and comes with a 30-day free trial. The Opera Mobile 9.5 software is currently available for Windows Mobile and Symbian OS based devices.

In addition to the official unveiling of Opera Mobile 9.7, the company is expected to use CTIA 2009 to feature Opera Turbo on other mobile devices as well as the latest version of its popular Opera Mini browser on BlackBerries and the T-Mobile G1. We'll be on the convention floor to bring you all this and much more breaking news from the wireless front so stayed tuned the latest and greatest.

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