Opera Mini 4 Released!

In the übergeek news of the day, Opera Mini 4 has been released.

Opera Mini is quite honestly one of the neatest mobile applications out there. If you have J2ME on your mobile phone, Opera Mini is a quick, FREE download just by going to http://mini.opera.com/ with your phone's built-in browser.

This new version attempts to emulate something that the iPhone does - instead of crunching up the web site you are trying to view immediately ala Skweezer or something of the sort, what Opera Mini 4 tries to do is first give you a "thumbnail" view of the entire web page first, then, when you click on something on the page it "zooms in" so you can read the text or take a closer look at the pictures.

In fact, to take a look at how Opera Mini might look on your mobile phone, you can check out the Opera Mini Demo.

It does seem to work on a great many older phones, up to and including my Nokia 6682. I've also been able to install it on Nokia N75 demo units at the AT&T stores. Where it seems to have some issues is on the Treos - there's some hideously long install process you have to go through just to get Java downloaded on those.

It does seem to have some issues with the more dynamic web sites, but for news sites and most blogs, Opera Mini does a really fantastic job ...