Monday, June 02, 2008

Opera Mini 4.1 on MotoQ

Opera Mini 4.1 is the best browser for mobile device I've tried so far.

The Q comes with Opera 8.65 for Windows Mobile and Yahoo!Go. Both allow restricted web surfing (mobile mode) but not in desktop view. (Okay, the Opera for WM supports desktop mode but it's prohibitively SLOW)
The Opera Mini browser allows full page view like you would see with your desktop and it's a lot faster. (Technical detail skipped, read Opera Mini's FAQ or forum.)

Opera Mini is a Java MIDLet and install on the Java VM.
The Java VM bundled with Q (I believe it's Jblend_VM) allows you to navigate or operate the Opera Mini pretty easily but there is a problem:
- The Opera Mini for Q is unsigned (untrusted) and the browser asks you EVERYTIME you try to connect and for EVERY links you click.

There's an option:
- Install a 2nd JVM called Esmertec's JBed. (Can be downloaded from xda-developers' forum)
- Install the Opera Mini 4.1 on this JVM. (Just invoke the OM4.1 jad again after JBed is installed)

The JBed has a selector.utf file under its AppDB folder, which you could modify the domain from "untrusted" to "tckmax". This give the Opera Mini max privilege and it will never prompt you for using network connection again.

One thing though - the JBed couldn't display Chinese fonts. (There might be a way to enable it since the font is supported by WM but I'm not sure how yet.) So if you care about Chinese, you have to stick to Jblend for now.

Opera Mini: http://www.operamini.com/download/
Java MIDLet Bible: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=339579&page=7

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