Opera Mini 5 Brings Blackberry Support

Opera has announced a new mobile phone browser, Opera Mini 5, also available for Blackberry devices.

The new browser, available to download from Opera’s site, runs on phones that support Java, including low-end handsets, and uses a client-server model to speed browsing on basic phones.

The new version adds features that Opera already offers on its desktop version, including tabbed browsing, aq “speed-dial” made up of thumbnails of previously-visited pages or favourites, and a password manager to make it easier to use e-commerce websites on a phone.

The browser is designed for touch-screen or keypad use. eWEEK Europe saw a demonstration of it on a feature phone – read our First Look at Opera Mini 5.

Opera claims to have more than 30 million active users, downloading a 12 billion pages per month using the current version of Opera Mini. As it works on Java, it should work on almost every handset, the company said.

Opera chief executive Jon von Tetzchner has said that low-end phones are a far more important market than smartphones – saying that the iPhone’s impact on mobile web browsing has been “over-rated”.

The Blackberry download is available from the same site.