Opera Software has released the final version of Opera Mini 4.2 for mobile phones, giving G1 handset users looking for change from Android's built-in WebKit browser a third party alternative to play with. Opera Mini, which is the first web browser alternative on Android, sports a number of enhancements, including what Opera claims is up to a 30 percent performance boost.

"With Opera Mini 4.2, we are showing the world that Opera never gets complacent. We will always be improving our product, adding speed, new functionality and features, and ensuring that it is accessible by all,” says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. “Our support of the Android platform helps fulfill our mission to be available on more platforms, for more devices and reach more users, anywhere in the world."Opera Mini also boasts greater multilingual support with more than 90 language versions, personalization through skins, Opera Link support for notes, and support for mobile video on a wider range of phones.

As if trying to steal Firefox's thunder, Opera was strategically launched days before Firefox 3's Guinness Book Record opening. The lean mean browsing machine has just got a whole lot meaner and leaner, though not in download size - 6.8MB; the install size is now more than double the size of its previous iteration at 3MB, one MB short of Firefox 3 install size.
Opera 9.5 has gone through many changes with a revamped address bar (that rivals Firefox 3 Awesome Bar), better content blocking, simplified download box, and most importantly faster performance and tighter memory use. Opera has altered its looks too, with a much more Vista-ish feel 3D obsidian look.

More than a browser

One thing I should bring to you attention is that Opera is more than just a browser. It's a browser, email client, rss reader, IRC chat client and newsgroup reader all rolled into a one-stop-Internet-shop (so to speak). True Firefox can be all this and much morebut I'm talking about out-of-the-box experience, which generally indicates what direction the makers of Opera are heading towards. Extensibility by third-party apps is for net savvy people, not for your usual mom' and pop's who'd like to surf the net.

The best part is that all these apps can be accessed through the handy side panel, which is well integrated with the browser. So when a new message arrives, a small window discreetly rises in the lower right-hand corner of your screen to alert you.
Another surprising functionality is the capability of Opera to handle torrents. It has a BitTorrent client built-in that no other browser offers. Even the search bar has a BitTorrent search option. Yes, this certainly will not match the capabilities of a full-fledged torrent client like utorrent, but is a good readymade feature slapped right in for those who can make some limited use of it.

Opera has announced the availability of Opera Mobile 9.5 on the new HTC Touch Diamond.The customized HTC-specific version introduces a new intuitive user interface (UI) and includes features that elevate the Internet experience on a phone. Page viewing and panning allows users to scan and navigate pages quickly while Opera Zoom enables users to dive into the page and get closer to the content they want. Turning the device sideways automatically rotates the Web page view from a portrait to landscape view.Other features in Opera Mobile 9.5 include tabbed browsing, improved text wrap, landscape mode, call phone number directly from Web page, history and bookmarks and copy text.

"Opera Mobile 9.5 on the HTC Touch Diamond will bring to customers the most powerful Web browser yet on a mobile phone," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. "Opera is on the road to give mobile Web browsing a complete facelift and an elevated user experience. This is just the beginning."

"2008 will come to be known as the year the mobile Internet became usable and the HTC Touch Diamond will be one of the main devices driving this change," said Peter Chou, president and CEO, HTC Corp. "We have worked very closely with Opera to deliver a feature set and browsing experience that is optimized for mobile, but viewed like it would on a PC."

A brand new weekly has been released by the Opera Desktop Team and this time, it has brought forth for testing a new feature. Previously seen in classics like Predator 1 and 2 Opera's cloaking feature doesn't make the browser blend with the environment but it 'hides' the document.all file so as to not have certain websites provide the IE-oriented code to Opera 9.5 which is standard-compliant enough to render pages correctly. Most of the times.

All in all, the newly-released Opera 9.5 build comes with:

- Even more Gmail2 fixes, getting closer to working
- More presice rounding of HSL values in CSSA brand new weekly has been released by the Opera Desktop Team and this time, it has brought forth for testing a new feature. Previously seen in classics like Predator 1 and 2 Opera's cloaking feature doesn't make the browser blend with the environment but it 'hides' the document.all file so as to not have certain websites provide the IE-oriented code to Opera 9.5 which is standard-compliant enough to render pages correctly. Most of the times.All in all, the newly-released Opera 9.5 build comes with:- Even more Gmail2 fixes, getting closer to working
- More presice rounding of HSL values in CSS
- Playing video on CNN works again
- Adding links to walls on Facebook now works
- Login to Open-Xchange now works
- Fixed various issues on Windows Live Mail
- Saving playlists on YouTube should now function correctly
- User style mode no longer applies to Mail or IRC tabs
- Several favicon fixes
- Fixed the line below dialog tabs in native skins
- Tweaking and improvements to Windows native skins (both themed and classic) based on feedback and bug reports
- Fixed a problem with wrong handling of some filetypes, including messed up display of MHTML
- Mac: Fixed color corruption when copying images (and preserve the alpha channel)
- Mac: Possibly fixed printing crashes on Leopard
- UNIX: Plugins in symlinked directories should now not be listed twice

The known issues of this version include:

- MIME type for executables is set to be handled by some plugin - change the configuration in your preferences to get this to work correctly
- Sparc builds will crash when initializing anything related to mail
- CPU usage will grow to 100% on UNIX when generating tooltips

To download the new build, for Windows, Mac OS or UNIX check out this page.