David Storey - MOTORIZR Z8 packs UIQ punch

MOTORIZR Z8 packs UIQ punch

Wednesday, 14. February 2007, 00:36:55

There is a lot of talk about the new MOTORIZR Z8 phone, recently unveiled in Barcelona. This is not a surprise with its RAZR-esque looks and unique kick-flip mechanism. One point that has been overlooked however is as it is a Symbian phone (I think a first for the four letter series of phones), and more specifically UIQ on top of Symbian, it means the phone and OS have more power and thus includes the full Opera Mobile as the default browser. Although this isn't the first of the RAZR family of offshoots to support Opera mobile -- The MOTORAZR MAXX does so via a custom port to Motorola's own P2K OS I believe -- It is significant as a full smartphone OS has been crammed into a premium fashion phone, and an OS where Opera is the default browser for the platform. The phone was developed by the former Sendo team, so I guess this is the super secret project no one could talk about and many people working on the project hadn't even seen. It looks well worth the wait.

As You may remember, Opera Mobile was also included recently on three Sony Ericsson UIQ phones. I think the M600 and W950 are particularly stylish and slim phones. Both share the same form factor and beat out the Blackberries and Treos of this world for size, style and portability (The Perl excluded). UIQ and Opera are certainly starting to get a lot of hot stylish phones now. This should help the acceleration of standards based, full (X)HTML browsers in the hands of potential users of the mobile web.

Even excluding all the phones Opera Mini can be installed on after shipping or by service providers (Opera has big deals with T-Mobile and Telefonica), Opera has been included on many of the most stylish and desirable phones coming out recently, iPhone excluded. I can't wait to see what Samsung come out with. Even Nokia got in on the act with the 6300. I've not bee a big fan of Nokia phones recently, as although they have been powerful, they've often been big and clunky. I prefer smaller phones, and the 6300 is the first slim phone I've seen from Nokia in long time, but running Opera Mini it has no compromises on the web front.

It is not only Mobiles of course where we are getting all the desirable gadgets. Apart from the iPod and iPhone, I think most of the hottest products are Opera powered, at least those that are web capable. We have the Wii and DS of course, and also the Archos 604Wifi (very sleek with it's brushed metal casing), Sony Mylo and the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. The web to go has never been so stylish or convenient. The iPod/iPhone is the only devices I can think of where Opera is unable to run. The PSP would be kind of nice, but the DS is well outselling it and it's touch screen is much more suitable for web surfing than the d-pad of the PSP.

Magazine layout using CSS3 multi-columnOpera codenames explained

Comments

Anonymous # 14. February 2007, 14:23

Rachid writes:

So, what about the iPhone? While it won't include an Opera version by default, will it be able to run Opera Mini? Or what about Opera Mobile for iPhone? Any plans there? :)

David Storey # 14. February 2007, 15:02

As far as I know Apple will not allow third party apps on the iPhone (and doesn't include Java), so that will bar Opera from running on it, even though in my opinion Opera Mini would provide good value for iPhone users -- It will be both faster and cost less to run than Safari on a network. Running on WiFi the difference will be less pronounced as data access will most likely be free then. The speed of Opera Mini would be especially useful as the phone doesn't support 3G, so has slower data access. Even on the Wifi network when Steve Jobs unveiled the phone the browser looked quite slow, and that was picked up on a few hands on previews. We've obviously got a lot more experience than Apple at creating mobile optimised browsers.

There has been some talk of Apple allowing tightly controlled downloads through iTunes, but this is just rumour, and the lack of Java will forbid Mini from running. Opera Mobile should be possible if this is the case, but as it is through iTunes it'd most likely have to be a paid download, and with Safari already being on by default it would have to give a pretty bad experience for people to pay for another browser. I'm sure we'd look into possibilities if we wee given the chance, but that is not my decision.

Ryan Octavianus # 15. February 2007, 12:30

is it going to be the new Opera 9 mobile packed in the phone?

David Storey # 15. February 2007, 22:42

I suspect it'll be a version of Opera 8, as we've just announced the plans to move to 9. Version 8 is used on UIQ 3, which the m600 etc uses, while the Moto phone uses an updated UIQ 3.1. The phone will have been in development for a while, so will probably be too early for 9, unless the release date is some time away.