Opera mini 5.1 beta for Symbian/S60 impression

Yesterday I came to know a new version (beta) of Mini for available Symbian/s60. So today I downloaded and tried it out on my E63. On my previous post I mentioned about some issues in opera mini. In this beta version they solved those issues and improved performance.

• Now QWERTY keyboard working properly, CAPS (Shift) and Numb (Fn) lock keys working, so no need to hold down shift and Fn key while typing lots of capital or numeric characters. Additional symbol menu showing up on pressing Chr key.
• Copy/Paste function working properly.
• Performance improved for start-up and page loading
• Option for selecting default access point – so the access point selection pop-up doesn’t show on every start-up.

I was wondering why everybody saying  “The native version”, well now Opera Mini  have sis and sisx coding instead of java. 8)

Just noticed one thing missing – feed subscription icon, which used to displayed on the top of the feed enabled pages in earlier versions. hoping they will fixed this little thing in further release.

Anyway I liked this new version and I am using it as my primary mobile browser Still sometime I’ll be needed to use Opera Mobile for accessing my local services

Opera Mini and Mobile together

Default S60 browser on Nokia’s most phones are not so impressive (sucks). As alternative there are some 3rd party browser applications available (e.g. Opera, skyfire and few more…), which are far better than the default browser. In this post I am going to tell about why I choose to use Opera mobile and Opera mini together on my mobile.

Opera have few different versions for different platforms and devices. Opera Mobile is designed to run on specific mobile OS e.g. Symbian, iOS, Android etc. and Opera Mini is designed for Java platform, so it can run on most devices. Opera Mini & Mobile, both versions now became very similar in features and functionalities. Both gives almost desktop like browser experience on smaller screen, both have some shortcut keys for easy page navigation, easy access to speed dial, bookmarks, history and downloads. The downloader has ability to pause/resume download. The current versions (Opera Mobile 10.1 & Opera Mini 5.1) have tab browsing, Opera Mini have a feed reader; all this makes the browsing experience more pleasant using Opera.

So If those two versions works almost same why I installed and using both versions on my mobile?

Well, they work almost same but there little difference in backend technology and performance, as you can see in this post “Opera Mini vs Opera Mobile on the E72”.

Opera mini uses opera render and compression server before displaying pages into browser so pages load pretty fast and uses less data (bandwidth). So when I am using limited/chargeable data plan opera mini help to save some data costs. Sometimes when I test some webpages running on local server, opera render and compression server works as proxy server and I able to access local webserver as outsider while sitting inside local network. There are some downsides of using opera mini, it doesn’t display complex pages exactly as it is, as you can see in this image below.

WordPress site on Opera Mini (left), on Opera Mobile (right)

Interactive pages (auto reload, scripts) don’t work properly sometimes. There is an issue with QWERTY keyboard, while entering text directly into webpage or address bar or search bar; additional symbol menu doesn’t show up while pressing Chr key, CAPS lock and Num lock doesn’t work, so when need to enter lots of capital or numeric characters you have to hold down Shift or Fn key continuously. Although opera mini still have that option “edit in full screen” like earlier versions, it opens up phones default text editing interface. And the copy/paste functionality doesn’t work properly.

Opera Mobile displays the webpages almost similar like desktop browsers including complex pages and uses more data and system resource. It’s slower than Mini. Although there is an option called “Turbo Mode”, it compress webpage to minimize data usage but I didn’t find is useful. I don’t think Turbo mode uses opera compression server to compress requested page, it just scaled down image’s quality on webpage and due to this compression process pages take more time to load. Less complex Interactive pages (auto reload, scripts) work well most times. Phone’s QWERTY keyboard works properly with opera mobile. Opera mobile gives much richer experience than Mini in some cases and sometime I need to access my local network devices (e.g. Router, NAS, Bit torrent remote, Printer, Media server) management pages using mobile, then I use Opera mobile. Opera Mini can’t access those offline (without internet) network pages since it uses online opera server.

Opera Mini and Mobile fulfill each other’s deficiency so I prefer to use both versions on my mobile. Hoping someday they will make a version which will overcome deficiencies of this two versions and installing one version will do the job. There is a big disappointment Opera (mini & mobile) doesn’t have flash support yet, I hope they will enable flash support in there further release.

Turn off 3G to save power

3G is not widely available in India yet and just few percent of users actually use 3G service. But most of the new mobile handsets available in market are equipped with 3G, those handsets by default kept in dual mode settings (factory settings). Dual mode automatically switches between 3G/UMTS or 2G/GSM network according to availability. If phone is set for dual mode, it will continuously search for an available 3G network and this will consume some battery power. Also 3G consume more battery than 2G network does. So those people who don’t use or not using 3G service for that moment can save some battery power by turning 3G reception off in their handsets. Most of those handset users are not aware of such settings.

Nokia users can change network mode from Settings > Phone > Network > Network Mode.
People using other brands mobile can find this setting somewhere under Network settings.

Share Online app on some Nokia phones

Most of you know VOX service will be ended on 30th September 2010. So now the Share Online application became useless on some Nokia phones, as VOX used to be the only sharing service available on that application. Although there are lots of options available from various blog/sharing service providers to share your contents directly from phone, e.g. email to your blog/site, using third party applications and using mobile browser.

Update:

I was searching if somehow it is possible to add some sharing service to Share Online app and found Furtiv offering some free and some paid plugins for Sharing Online app. Plugins are available for various sharing services like Facebook, Tweetphoto, Picasa, Orkut, Dropbox, Myspace, Flicker, Linkedin, Twitpic, yfrog, img.ly, posterous, foursquare, youtube, Twitvid.

Those plugins can be downloaded from http://furtiv.mobi/ and OVI store.

After downloading and configuring (logging and allowing access) plugin for specific sharing services you will be able to post content from phone using Sharing Online app to configured services.

WordPress for Nokia

When I made my account on WordPress, I noticed they have official WordPress application for some platforms/devices like iPhone, iPad, Android. But I didn’t find an app for Nokia (Symbian) and I was surprised to see that. As iPhone, iPad and android Symbian is a very popular platform. So I search for an app on Symbian platform and found an application – WordMobi. I don’t really used WordMobi for writing and publishing any post, i just tried it for a while. WordMobi had most of those features usually needed but I didn’t like its text-based interface much. After that I didn’t search for more because mostly I used to do my blogging from computer and by email from mobile.

Today while I was reading some blogs, suddenly I thought to look once again if there any official or 3rd party WordPress application available for Symbian. I found an official WordPress application from http://dev.nokia.wordpress.org/. I think the application still in beta stage. Some additional plugins/add-ons/library need to be installed to run the WordPress application. Although installation was easy but it took long time to download and install those necessary plugins/add-ons/libraries. After some unsuccessful attempt finally I installed the app on my E63.

Here are some screenshots I took while using the application

After lunching the application first time, while I was inputting my password noticed a issue. Suppose my password is 12345, after processing 1 key while I pressed 2 key 1 got replaced by 2. Using a trick I able to type my password and got connected to my blog. Application developers need to look on the password input section

Using this application you can view, approve, delete, spam, reply comments. Create new post, assign category, tags, time, photos, videos, location (not available on 0.8.2 for S60 3.1) to post. Publish it or save it to local or blog draft. You can also view, edit, and delete your existing posts. You can create edit and delete page. You can see your blog stat and can manage multiple blog.

GUI of the application is nice but I felt like it’s targeted for touch screen devices mainly. On non-touch screen device I didn’t find it very user friendly. Still there are many users using non touch devices. I started writing this post on the mobile, I found I need to make some correction while I was writing, It was little difficult to navigate to the word/sentence I wanted to change. I thought paste some parts of the post I wrote in note but unfortunately this application doesn’t support copy/paste. So I saved this post as draft and later edited using computer and publish.

Overall WordPress for Nokia application is good. I hope they will improve more in feather release.