Opera has been somewhat ambiguous about how exactly the "Turbo" mode in the upcoming version of Opera Mobile 9.7 functions. As a refresher, the next version of Opera Mobile, due out in May, will bring hugely impressed rendering speeds — it will be 80% faster than Opera Mobile 9.5, which is preloaded onto many Windows Mobile phones. It will also feature full AJAX and Flash support.
We called OM 9.7 a "hybrid" browser (in that it uses a combination of server-side compression like Skyfire and Opera Mini with device-side rendering like Opera Mobile 9.5). An article from CNET confirms this suspicion, "...the Turbo engine uses the exact same server engine as Opera Mini's, Opera's proxy browser for Java phones." The article argues that some may want to turn the Turbo option off, because it has a hard time with higher quality images plus it doesn't deal well with some AJAX content.
Hopefully there will be an easy way to toggle Turbo on and off within Opera Mobile 9.7. Most users will probably want to leave it on most of the time — then, if a page doesn't come up correctly, they can turn it off, and have the full rendering experience they've come to expect from Opera Mobile 9.5. All that said, we can't wait to test out Opera's latest flagship browser.