Opera Mini

Opera Mini is a web browser designed primarily for mobile phones, smartphones and personal digital assistants. Until version 4 it used the Java ME platform, requiring the mobile device to run Java ME applications. From version 5 it is also available as a native application for Android, bada, iOS, Symbian OS, and Windows Mobile. Opera Mini is offered free of charge, supported mainly through deals with mobile operators to have Opera Mini pre-installed in phones, and other sources of revenue such as search advertising deals, licensing and paid bookmarks and Speed Dial placement.

Opera Mini was derived from the Opera web browser for personal computers, which has been publicly available since 1996. Opera Mini began as a pilot project in 2004. After limited releases in Europe, it was officially launched worldwide on 24 January 2006.

Opera Mini requests web pages through Opera Software's servers, which process and compress them before sending them to the mobile phone, speeding up transfer by two to three times and dramatically reducing the amount of data transferred, chargeable on many mobile phone data plans. The pre-processing increases compatibility with web pages not designed for mobile phones. However, interactive sites which depend upon the device processing JavaScript do not work properly.