I’m a Blackberry Curve 8330 user, not the fastest Blackberry in the phone bin, but it worked for my smart phone budget. Although the native Blackberry Browser takes care of most of my basic browsing needs, I’ve found myself on several occasions needing to research a few things at once, and I just can’t do that with the native Browser. I used the previous version of Opera, but I recently noticed a new version was in beta 2, so I thought “what the heck.” Click more to view my quick review of the new Opera browser, screenshots included!

First of, it’s important to know that this is still BETA software, meaning it’s not completely stable, and it may have a few glitches. The Opera website does state that the browser has not been officially confirmed for my phone yet, and you may receive the same warning..long story short…try this beta at your own risk!

Now to the good stuff. First and foremost, Opera Mini has tabbed browsing! It’s easy to use, and with 2-3 tabs open I had no noticeable drop in performance.

Tabbed Browsing

The browser overall is a bit slow scrolling around different pages, but I’m not convinced that it’s really an issue with the software as much as it is an issue with the phone I’m using. I feel like the browser may be a little snappier on a faster phone like the Blackberry Tour or even the Blackberry Bold.

There is a very polished password manager, and you can access all of the bookmarks saved on your desktop computer via “Opera Link.”

Opera Link

There’s also a feature that looks very similar to Top Sites that Opera calls Speed Dial…it’s essentially a place to put your most often visited sites.

Download Manager

Last but not least Opera has a very intuitive download manager that even allows you to pause and resume downloads! There are many other great features of this mobile browser, but I’ll let you discover those yourself! Download Opera Mini 5 Beta 2 at the following link…

http://www.opera.com/mini/download/

Let me know your thoughts in the comments, overall I think this browser shows great promise!