Slightly ajar

Last year, Opera was included in the sequel to one of the most popular mobiles of all time - The MOTORAZR 2. It was quite impressive the the full Opera Mobile was squeezed into a fashion phone that is fairly slim. CES in Las Vegas is in full swing, and it seems that Opera Mobile 8.5 is also included in the blingist phone of them all - the MOTORAZR 2 Luxury Edition. The phone has such esentially as 18k gold plating and snake skin effect on the back. I'm sure the phone stands out. I'm not a gold fan, so I'd never buy this phone, but I'm sure bling fans will love it. I think it'd look much better with silver, or brushed steel, and a regular leather back (maybe brown). Maybe Motorola will be kind enough to make me my own Web Opener special edition .

I'm sure there are tons of new phones and gadgets getting announced this week, and I don't have an official list of what includes Opera. I did notice from the UIQ site that the Moto Z10 had been announced though. No confirmation that it is Opera (why do phone manufacturers always make this so difficult?) but Opera is the default browser on UIQ, so its a safe bet. This looks to be an update to the MOTORIZR Z8 banana phone, and looses the green look in favour of a more sleek metal/grey appearance. How come UIQ always gets the good looking smart phones? No word on the resolution yet as far as I can see, but it sports a 2.2" display and very fast connectivity.

Although not Opera related, I also noticed on Engadget that a new Blackberry is coming out. I guess this has been announced at CES too. Blackberrys suppose to be great phones, but every time I went to the States and saw how big all the Blackberrys and Palms looked compared to most of the phones over in Europe, I could never consider carrying one. However Blackberry seem to be getting it together in the style department. The Pearl was much smaller and wasn't pig ugly. After touching one though, the materials and fit and finish seem to let it down. It felt very plasticy. This new phone looks to continue the improvements style wise, and hopefully in the fit and finish department too. The phone still looks fairly large in the picture though - like iPhone dimensions (which is very wide and tall). Opera Mini is probably the best browser by far on the Blackberry, which is why we are so popular in the Blackberry community, so I look forward to see it running on this phone. The screen isn't as nice as the iPhone for surfing, but the physical Qwerty keyboard partly makes up for that. Speaking of screens, the new Mylo 2 has a very impressive screen, that makes even the iPhone screen look poor. Sadly I don't think it has Opera on this time. Opera Zoom would be fantastic on the device.