New Opera Mini 3.0 adds RSS reader & Photo sharing

Opera Software on Tuesday released a new version of its web browser for mobile phones. Dubbed Opera Mini 3.0, the latest version is an upgrade of Norwegian corporation’s award-winning mobile browser already used by eight million people worldwide.

The upgrade includes new features that enhance the ability to upload pictures to all popular online community sites, including MySpace, Blogger, Flickr, Facebook and My Opera. Besides photo sharing, it adds a reader for RSS feed, Content Folding, a secure connection for popular webmail like Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail, and for online banking or shopping on eBay or Amazon.com, and many more.

Opera Mini allows users to turn on their phone cameras through their browser to instantly take and publish pictures to their e-mail, forum or blog. The integrated RSS feed reader keeps preferred news and content one click away in the browser.

Available for free download globally from the Opera web site, the new browser works with almost all variety of phones that support Java. Also, the phone must be subscribed to a wireless operator/carrier's Internet data plan. It can be downloaded in three ways: as an SMS attachment, a WAP download, or downloaded to the user's PC and then transferred over via Bluetooth or USB attachment.

Some leading operators like T-Mobile International and Telefonica Moviles have already installed the Opera Mini browser in their selected handsets.

About their latest version, Chief Executive Officer of Opera Software, Jon von Tetzchner says, “We are excited to improve on the mobile Web experience that has already been so well received by both end users and distributors.”

"I think the main reason for Mini's success is that it, for the first time, allows millions of people to use their mobile phones to access the same Web sites they do from their desktop."

The modified version reduces the size of data transferred to the phone, making browsing fast and cheaper for users that pay per kilobyte transferred. It accomplishes the process through server-side compression. "This compression enables the processing of Web pages on even basic phones and also reduces the costs associated with browsing and data transferring for subscribers of limited data plans," Opera Software says.

Since its debut in January 2006, Opera Mini has fascinated a number of people and has won praise as being fast and compact. As per the Oslo, Norway-based Opera’s estimates, around 8 million people downloaded the earlier versions in the first 10 months. This mini browser has been gaining ground in mobile phones and handheld computers.