Opera Mobile 12 for Android gets a massive update, Intel and MIPs versions debut
Opera has made some major improvements to its Mobile and Mini browsers in recent versions, and today at MWC 2012 they’ve announced a new spate of enhancements to their smartphone and tablet versions.
First up is a new channel for Opera Mini, Opera Mini Next. Just like it is on the desktop, Opera Mini Next is aimed at beta enthusiasts that don’t mind trading the occasional bug or application crash for cutting-edge functionality. For this go-round, Next is offering up a glimpse at the new Opera Mini Smart Page, a social networking complement to the company’s trademark Speed Dial page. The Speed Dial itself has been improved and now supports an unlimited number of shortcuts.
Its big brother, Opera Mobile, has seen numbers upgrades. First and foremost, there’s support for WebGL and hardware accelerated rendering on Android devices. HTML5 capabilities have been boosted, thanks to Opera’s Ragnarok engine, and users can now take advantage of web apps and forms that allow for camera input from tablets and phones. Like Opera Mini Next, Opera Mobile 12 now allows creating an unlimited number of Speed Dial entries.
Opera Mobile 12 for Android is also now available on two different architectures: MIPs and Intel. That’s great news for those of you who own a low-cost Android tablet (think $100 on eBay) that run a MIPs processor, because finding quality apps that run on them can be a bit frustrating. Now, you’ll at least have access to a top-notch third-party browser. As far as Intel support goes, that’s probably more applicable to the handful of Medfield phones that have also been unveiled at MWC than it is to tablets.
(Source: geek.com)
