Opera Mini 5 beta hits the Android Market

It was a little over a year ago when Opera released its Mini 4.2 browser for Android-based smartphones, though most users still preferred to use the default WebKit browser as it was a bit more stable and user-friendly. But Opera kept working at it and over the summer had the first beta of the Mini 5, though it was only for Java-based smartphones and Blackberry devices. Now we are happy to report that the new Mini 5 beta browser has been released and is avaliable for Android via the Android Market, or by visiting m.opera.com/next in the phone's mobile web browser. It comes with tabbed browsing, password management, download manager, and compresses pages down to 90% to increase the speed of them being sent and downloaded to the phone. Unfortunately, multitouch pinch-and-zoom is still missing at this time on Opera Mini, so here's hoping it will be included on Opera Mobile 10 for Android that is due out at some point later this year.

source: Opera

*UPDATE*
Check out our first-look and video of the Opera Mini 5 beta browser app for Android here.