iBece.org

When I installed Opera Mini on my ageing (but still very stylish) Nokia 6100, I couldn’t wait to express my joy to the world. You see, I’d been reluctantly looking around for a replacement phone for some time, mainly in order to do something which was easy a few years ago - check my email. When I first bought the 6100 (my first WAP/GPRS phone), my ISP had WAP email. Since then, as sites embraced new standards, the old Nokia’s web browser could no longer handle this task. Even Google’s release of a Java mail client offered no hope - my phone was not supported. Now with this new application installed, my phone’s been given a new chance at life.

Opera Mini is a Java ME application (midlet) that runs on even old (like my Nokia 6100) phones. Not only can it display WAP pages designed for mobiles, but it allows you to surf the world wide web thanks to its ability to reformat them for tiny screens. This task is actually taken care of by Opera’s servers, which then send the reformatted pages straight to your phone in the most efficient way. The end result is faster download times and less bandwidth usage (important when you pay by the kilobyte), as well as the ability to read any web site out there.

The latest version of Opera Mini maintains a constantly open connection to the Opera server. As a result, browsing is very snappy. Response times are superior even to the built-in WAP browser, which often makes life painfully slow. For the security conscious, secure connections are now also supported.

I’d been dreading the thought of parting with my small and light Nokia, but it had increasingly seemed unavoidable. Thanks to Opera, I can now hold off upgrading until a new phone finally catches my eye - something that hasn’t happened in a very long time.

To download Opera Mini, point your browser to www.operamini.com.