New Opera Mobile: Slimmer, safer surfing on the go

After a strict diet, the new Opera Mobile 12.1 for Android is ready to show off its sleek new binary in the Google Play store. Despite being tailor made for four different chipsets, ARM v5 and v7, MIPS and X86, the Opera Mobile 12.1 browser remains sleek and slender since you only get the version suited for the chipset in your Android mobile or tablet. That saves time and data on downloading — Opera style. Combined with its Opera Turbo compression technology, Opera Mobile 12.1 is one lean, mean surfin’ machine.

If you don’t know Opera Mobile from before, it’s most easily described as the full-featured sibling of the data-saving Opera Mini, a browser essential for anyone on a slow network, or in need of compression to save data, for example while roaming abroad. Opera Mobile 12.1 features Opera Turbo technology, one click turns on the compression capability — and you will use less data.

Keeping the baddies at bay

The bad guys on the web never pass up an opportunity to try their tricks on surfers, but staying mobile doesn’t have to mean being unsafe. Unlike Blade Runner, you don’t need a Voight-Kampff test to determine whether you have a rogue site on your hands, just Opera Mobile’s new fraud detection. The fraud detection system tells you when a webpage has been marked as being suspicious or used for illicit activity. If you get a warning, it’s a good idea to think twice about visiting that site.
Raisin’ the standards

Using the web on the go should not mean sacrificing functionality. That’s why Opera Mobile now supports even more web standards, making sure the experience of mobile surfing is as close to the desktop experience as possible.

From the big screen to the mobile

In Opera Mobile, several features that have previously only been seen on the big screen, the computer screen that is, come to life on your Android mobile or tablet. In Opera Mobile 12.1, several heavy-hitting desktop capabilities are available for your mobile and tablet devices:

SPDY: Shortly after the introduction of SPDY on Opera 12.10 desktop beta, the HTTP improvement protocol has made it into the Opera Mobile version. Using a new and improved protocol for communicating to web servers around the world, the SPDY protocol makes fetching webpages more efficient. Twitter and Gmail are two early adopters of the SPDY protocol. Rumors has it that SPDY, by the way, would be pronounced “spø-ddi” in Norwegian.

WebSockets: Rich content is the new way of the web, and WebSockets is here to make it happen. With WebSockets, the browser in your mobile device get top notch access to the web server, improving two-way communications between your mobile device and web server for applications.

Better-looking browsing

There is no reason for letting surfers have a bad day on the web while using mobile devices. With Opera Mobile 12.1, there are even more options for web developers to improve the surfing experience and make sure the content of their webpages is displayed in the best way possible. This is why we included even more web standards in the new, smaller package.

CSS features: New support for CSS Animations and Flexbox allows web developers to be even more creative in design and layout of their webpages.

More HTML5 goodies: Combine the visual eye candy of CSS with some HTML5 practicality and voilá, even better mobile browsing. That’s why we’ve added HTML5 goodies like HTML5 Drag and Drop and the HTML5 Clipboard API to Opera Mobile 12.1. These features help web developers connect better to the surfer’s devices and, e.g., access clipboard content such as text and pictures.

Download Opera Mobile 12.1 for free Android from the Google Play store!

Source: Press Release

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