I've tested this latest version briefly, and my informal tests support Opera's claims that this new version has better performance in terms of rendering speed and responsiveness. Loading up Neowin's homepage took a full 10 seconds less on this beta release. Strangely, enabling the Turbo mode resulted in slower load times on my wi-fi connection. I didn't face any serious slow-downs even with a few websites loading in background tabs. Memory usage hovered around 1 MB plus.
Rendering and standards support:
There's no support for embedded Youtube videos though, you'll instead get a link that opens the video stream in Windows Media Player. Rather than that, images and text are rendered smoothly, and remains easy on my eye despite the 400x240 resolution of my Omnia i900. Opera gets top marks for accurate display of websites. Just for fun, I ran the Acid3 test -you can see the results in the screenshot. Not that bad, huh?
Bookmarks and saved pages
The new speed dial feature offers quick access to your favourite sites. You also have an option to add more bookmarks and create folders to organise them. You can save versions of a webpage for future reference.
The find-in-page works well, allowing you to jump through matches. All matching terms are highlighted.
Conclusion:
Though it may be a beta version, this version of Opera Mobile takes a few steps in the right direction. The interface remains uncluttered and touch-friendly, and general responsiveness has improved. Inclusion of flash support would be a good addition though. (Perhaps flash could be enabled for a few specified websites, while pesky flash ads on others would be blocked?)
More information and download:
Opera Mobile 10 beta
