2008-02-09

Using Opera 8.65 With My W960i

The web browser application supplied by Vodafone with my W960i is Opera 8.65 for Symbian OS ("701") and I have no idea what the ("701") refers to.

Note that this version of Opera will only work on mobile phones and is commonly referred to as Opera Mobile.

It is important to appreciate that your experience of Opera 8.65 is totally dependent on your mobile phone company and their customised web service which in my case is Vodafone and their web service which is called Vodafone Live.

Launch the Opera Mobile web browser by selecting the globe icon on the standby screen or the main menu.

My W960i is locked to Vodafone so by default my homepage is locked to Vodafone Live which is slightly annoying.

With Vodafone Live the soft-core porn at extra £££ is just one click away.

My W960i is locked to Vodafone and the Opera Mobile bookmarks are preloaded and although I can add and delete my own bookmarks I an not able to delete any of the bookmarks shown above which again is slightly annoying.

I can synchronise my Vodafone Live mobile favourites with my desktop PC favourites. Note that these favourites are stored on the Vodafone Live web server. Lets chose My Sony Ericsson W960i Smartphone as an example.

The default web browsing experience is for Vodafone Live to adapt non-mobile friendly sites which means that Vodafone Live adds a custom toolbar and breaks the page into fragments. You are expected to view one fragment at a time which is not a particularly satisfying way to surf the web. In particular the custom toolbar takes up too much screen space.

If you zoom out then you get a page at once view and you can select a section to view.

When you select a section to view the result is not very satisfactory as the fragment only contains a small amount of content and is incomplete. It would probably take hours to view an entire page in this way.

A small improvement can be achieved by turning on Fit to screen and Fullscreen.

At least in full screen mode you can use the whole screen without wasting valuable screen space with toolbars.

Finally here is a reminder of the version of Opera 8.65 for Symbian OS ("701") provided with the W960i. Remember that your web browsing experience is totally depended on the web service provided by your mobile phone company.

This article is one of a series about the Opera Mobile web browser and is intended to be an out of the box description using the Vodafone mobile phone network. I will describe alternative ways of using Opera Mobile in future articles.

This explanation applies to the Sony Ericsson W960i from Vodafone but it probably also applies to other Symbian UIQ 3.0 smartphones such as P1i, W950i, P990i and M600i.

Good luck with your web browsing and please post your thoughts in the comments section.

4 comments:

mizi2054 said...

hi... I'm Ramzy from Malaysia.. can i know.. when we use Wifi and open the web browser, its did not charge to communication provider ( mobile ).. that mean still open the website using the wifi right?

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karthikmuralitharan said...

Hai i am using w960i and for browser i am using opera 5.1 mini. You guys are using opera mini 8.5. I just want to know how can i get opera mini 8.5 i am not using vodafone i am using airtel network. How can i get opera mini 8 version.

karthikmuralitharan said...

i also have the above mentioned problem. Please someone help