Phonedig

Opera announced their latest browser for mobile phones, the Opera Mini 5 browser. Although still in beta, the new browser boasts improvements including a user interface revamp, Speed Dial bookmarks and tabbed browsing. New features include:

• Tabbed browsing - Allow users to browser several sites simultaneously.
• Touchscreen or keypad browsing
• Password manager
• Speed Dial

Download the beta version here.

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Looks like Skyfire beta for BlackBerry has been released to beta testers. This release contains number of enhancements and bug fixes. It’s still not ready for general release but it looks like they’re making great strides into what may one of the better browsers for the BlackBerry. Check out the changes:

New features:

• New Keyboard Shortcuts:
  We mapped the keyboard shortcuts to be similar to the ones in the
  native BlackBerry browser to offer a more familiar user experience.
• Switch to Skyfire:
  Once Skyfire is installed, you’ll see a “Switch to Skyfire” option show
  up in the options menu of the original Blackberry browser. We added
  this feature to help when users click on links in email and SMS and end
  up launching the native browser instead of Skyfire or when you navigate
  to a web site that is better viewed in Skyfire.
• Text Entry in Thumbnail view:
  You now don’t have to zoom-in to enter text. We resolved that issue and
  now enter text directly in the thumbnail view of pages.
• Contextual zoom with camera corners:
  Similar to the other Skyfire platforms, we now support contextual zoom.
  Thus we detect areas of interest (say articles or images) and allow you
  to zoom-in to areas easily by fitting the area of interest to the
  screen dimensions.
• Faster zooming: You’ll see a great
  improvement in your ability to zoom. Unlike Alpha 2, the page displays
  text at all zoom levels, without any redrawing of the screen. Less
  checkerboards.

Known bugs:

• You cannot connect to Skyfire: We still have limited capacity
  for this Alpha. Thus if enough testers are already browsing at the
  moment, you might not be able to connect. Simply try again in a few
  minutes. This is a good reminder as well to NOT share this alpha with
  anyone (as per NDA), since this would limit capacity even further. The
  next release will address this.
• General hiccups when entering and exiting streaming mode, including: “An error occurred while playing media” error message when flash object is detected and “streaming” mode activated.
• Slow performance on 2.5G networks: We are still optimizing. You will get the best experience on 3G or WiFi networks for now.
• Error Messages: “An error occurred while playing media” error message in streaming mode.
• Volume Control bug: Sometimes you cannot control volume while in stream mode. This is a known BlackBerry bug.
• Refresh And Rendering Options: Stale tiles from the previously visited pages show up when scrolling up or down. We’re working on fixes to reduce checkerboards.

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Today Amazon.com unveiled the launch of their new AmazonWireless.com beta. Nope, it’s not the original Amazon’s site optimized for your phone but it’s a site that actually sells the phone direct to you.

So far it offers 120 phone models from AT&T and Verizon Wireless–quite a selection. The cool thing is that they offer free 2 day shipping on most models and will automatically deduct any mail-in rebates offered by the carrier (saving consumers a lot of hassle).

I, for one, think this is a great idea. The site is in your typical, easy to use Amazon.com format and all rebates, prices, service plans, etc are clearly layed out. You might want to check it out.

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Pardon the pun, but it looks like the newest iPhone software, which has yet to be released to the public, produces better quality images when snapping photos with the handset’s 2 megapixel camera.  Although Apple hasn’t publicly made any announcements regarding tweaks to the iPhone’s software since they announced 3.0 a few month ago, numerous features have been unearthed in beta testing.   Also, rumors surfaced last month that Apple’s next iteration of the iPhone, gen 3, will have a 3.2 megapixel camera.

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