Opera Mini 4.1 full release now available

By Tim Conneally, BetaNews

May 14, 2008, 12:53 PM

The next version of the up-and-coming graphical browser -- a popular alternative to what phone manufacturers typically supply -- has emerged from beta and is available free.

The latest iteration of Opera Mini, which has already been ported over to Android, promises an all-around faster experience on the mobile Web. In addition to intelligent text-completion for entering URLs to speed the browsing process, Opera Mini's servers have been upgraded to expedite page loads. In-text searching ("Ctrl-F") was also added to streamline content location.

Handsets equipped with JSR-75, a standard for accessing PIM data and file systems on J2ME phones, receive several upgraded features in this release. These features include site caching so that pages may be viewed in their entirety without a connection, and uploading and downloading without having to be re-routed through the phone's native browser. Depending on whether native browsers have internal firewall-like address restrictions for phones' own safety purposes (such as BlackBerry's, for instance), this may or may not be perceived as a feature.

A banner feature of Opera Mini 4 is Opera Link, the ability to sync both bookmarks and speed dial listings with other devices running Opera Mini 4 or Opera 9.5.

The beta period for this product was a relatively quick one, lasting just over one month.