Opera Mobile 9.5 brings iPhone-like browsing

Opera today rolled out its self-titled Opera Mobile 9.5, the latest version of its browser for smartphones. The new version is built around Opera's in-house Presto web renderer and now offers panning and zooming, giving viewers an iPhone-like ability to either view a page at full size or center on content for a clearer look. The update is also said to draw sites much faster than before: even complex sites with AJAX and other Web 2.0 technologies render quickly and accurately, Opera says. Support for Flash Lite 3 also provides support for MySpace, YouTube, and other sites that are heavily dependent on Flash audio or video.

Other features include a widget interface while Opera Mobile is in idle mode, the ability to send images as MMS messages, and the option of saving pages to memory for viewing in offline mode. Tabbed browsing and other features carry over from earlier releases. Opera will show the browser next week at the Mobile World Congress show and hopes to release public betas of version 9.5 for Linux, Symbian, and Windows Mobile devices in the near future.