Opera Software today releases a beta version of Opera Mini 5 for Android smartphones, delivering web browsing through server side data compression by up to 90 percent before sending content to the phone. Similar to Opera Mini 5 for other mobile platforms, the Opera Mini 5 gives you tabbed browsing, Speed Dial, password manager and bookmarks. To download, simply visit m.opera.com/next with the Android browser or search for Opera Mini 5 in the Android Market.

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Back in April, Opera released a preview of their mobile Opera Mini browser for the Android SDK. It looked as good as ever with running on Android, but it still was not complete. Until now we have had to deal with the less than perfect integrated Android browser.

Now users have a choice as to which browser they will use to surf the net. Newly introduced into the Android Market is Opera Mini 4.2 made specifically for Android. What a relief to see one of our favorite browsers on our new favorite handset! However this version is reportedly not without bugs.

Some highlights of the mobile browser are changeable skins and the “speed dial” features that gives you a nice grid of popular windows so you don’t have to open your bookmarks every time. Opera Mini is very unique in the fact that instead of downloading the page to your device and then rendering it, the browser renders it on their servers and then sends it to the handset reducing the load time.

Our question to you is, how do you like it? Is this enough to get you to completely stop using the native browser? Send us a comment and let us know.

When we first heard about Google Android, we were very excited about the possibilities it presents, and thought it would be very cool to make Opera Mini available on it, plus it would give mobile developers a better choice of browsers to make available on handsets. But it goes beyond just cool factor – one of Opera’s central doctrines is providing the best internet experience on any device – the Android platform is another missing piece of the puzzle for us to fill in. Read the rest of this entry »