Opera Mini 5 vs. Skyfire

We've done a lot of testing of Skyfire in the past and have crowned it with the "fastest Windows Mobile browser" title thanks to its server-side rendering of webpages and fast interface. Server-side rendering, which uses various forms of compression to allow for quicker page load times, is also employed by Opera Mini, which is the most downloaded mobile browser, according to Opera. Recently, Opera released Mini 5 beta which brings a completely new interface and many new features.

In this video, we put Opera Mini 5 up against Skyfire, and find that latter is still a bit faster in pulling down web pages. That said, the new feature set of Opera Mini 5--tabbed browsing, extremely fast movement to previous pages, the sleek interface, quick launch tiles, and integrated Google search--make it a joy to use. We look forward to Opera Mini 5 getting out of beta and being less buggy.

To get Skyfire, point your mobile browser to get.skyfire.com. For Opera Mini 5, go to mini.opera.com. Since Opera Mini is Java-based, you'll need a Java manager such as MIDlet manager in order to get it to run.

Update: Some readers are experiencing faster load times for Opera Mini 5 when using Jbed Midlet manager. Thanks, Patrik.