Quick Web browser test & comparison: latest Iris and Opera Mobile versions
I’ve quickly tested the latest, current Iris and Opera Mobile versions, 1.1.9 and 9.7b1, respectively. (The former is available HERE, the latter HERE) I’ve done so on both VGA (the IPAQ 210 and the HTC Universal) and QVGA (the HTC Wizard) devices.
Of the two, I’d definitely go with Opera Mobile as it’s definitely closer Safari (or iCab Mobile) on the iPhone. While Iris does get better and better over time, it’s still nowhere as fast and easy-to-use as Opera Mobile. Furthermore, it still has rendering problems affecting particularly QVGA users. (And, on VGA, causing pretty small character sizes, particularly in Portrait orientation. Needless to say, it’s not possible to change the character size in Iris, unlike in Opera Mobile [see Settings / Display / Minimum Font Size])
On QVGA: with some sites, no problems at all with OM; with Iris, you MUST switch to Column mode; otherwise, the text is unreadable
Some of the disadvantages of Iris 1.1.9 compared to OM 9.7:
Iris: Impossible to directly copy text from Web pages to the clipboard. In Opera Mobile, all you need to do is select the appropriate menu item from the page context menu.
Open in new tab: still not supported (while it does exist in OM’s link context menu)
Impossible to disable animations, which kinda slows down working
No plug-ins
Much slower to load pages than OM 9.7 on the HTC Wizard
No “stop page loading” icon or even menu at all
To see the rendering difference, check out the test suite pages linked from HERE (more specifically, the Formatting (first) group in the chart. Basically, Iris is still suffering from exactly the same problems as with the, back in January, tested version 1.0.16 (1.1.0 b3).
I'm completely baffled by the new Opera 9.7. I've installed it two different times on two different devices and every time I uninstall it within an hour because it's so bad. I absolutely love Opera 9.5 and use it as my only browser daily. But 9.7 slows my devices to a crawl. Pages take literally minutes to load sometimes even over wifi. The text is unreadable unless zoomed in (no zooming necessary on a Diamond 2 to read text with 9.5). Many websites default to the mobile site (cnn.com or yahoo.com for example). And it freezes constantly.
I realize it's a beta but I've noticed a lot of people raving about how great it is and I just don't get it. Anyone else have a similar experience to mine? Any ideas on why it's running so poorly on my Diamond 2?
In the text below the video it says it supports winmo. And judging from that samsung phone they used in the demo i think it is the 480 or something which i believe doesn't have that much processing power and the performance of the browser seemed pretty good.
Note that I've also published a pretty thorough review & comparison of it, also linking to the homepage / CAB executable (through the previous article).
In the text below the video it says it supports winmo. And judging from that samsung phone they used in the demo i think it is the 480 or something which i believe doesn't have that much processing power and the performance of the browser seemed pretty good.
Have you tried it yet?
Thanks for the heads-up - it seems it's not available for download. I send them an inquiry to see whether they have a copy I could review.
(BTW, it seems to be pretty much like SkyFire, at least based on the description. Which also means performance problems if one's far away from the central server.)
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Originally Posted by montecristo1
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