Opera Mobile 9.7 beta released

Catching up with its desktop brother

8 June 2009 10:57 GMT / By Duncan Geere

Following Pocket-lint's recent report that Opera Mobile 9.7 wasn't far off release, the company has announced that a beta version is now available.

The company is aiming for speed with this update. With that in mind, it's launched "Opera Turbo", a technology that speeds up browsing by rendering pages on the Opera servers and then compressing them before sending to your phone.

There's also a newly upgraded browser engine for better performance, called Presto 2.2. Opera reckons that it'll render pages 25% faster than previously.

Lastly, there's the Opera Widgets manager. This is a bit of kit that lets you install widgets for your favourite services, enabling easier access. GeoQuiz, Twitter, Bubbles, MyStatus, and Google Translate widgets come pre-installed, and more are found at widgets.opera.com.

At the moment, Opera 9.7 is only available for Windows Mobile-based handsets. Here's hoping that versions for Symbian, BlackBerry and Android follow in the near future.