As a web dev and mobile web dev, I have to deal with browser issues constantly. The problem is much worse on mobile, worse than you can imagine if you haven't had to deal with it. Opera has finally released a version of their browser for Microsoft Smartphones so I immediately downloaded and installed it to see if it was as good on my smartphone as it is on the other phones I've played with (Nokia, Sony/Ericsson, Samsung). It wasn't.
On a scale of 1-10, I give Opera 8 for MS Smartphone a 5 because it is only half as good as it needs to be before I would ever use it.
Accesskeys don't work. This will probably be seen as a major problem to some. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I don't *like* it but I'm not sure I really hate it. At the least, I think it is a bad idea because accesskeys are one of the features mobile users have grown to rely on. Every time during the last couple days of testing when I've seen a list of links on a page I am familiar with and click the "1" key (thinking I'm going to launch the first link, the link labeled "1") and instead trigger Opera's "show the 'Go To' menu page" shortcut, I grow a little more used to the lack of access keys but a little less happy with it. Opera's keypad shortcuts are nice but not at the expense of a feature like Access Keys. In light of the next beef, access keys's absence is a much bigger problem.
Opera breaks/evolves mobile web page navigation. Evolution is great. I'm all for it. But Opera's new, unique method of navigation takes a while to get used to. The Up and Down keys are "page up" and "page down", something unexpected and, at least initially, unappreciated. When viewing a page with a list of links, most mobile web users expect to click "down" and move from one link to the next, vertically, down the page. Instead, they'll click down and end up at the last link on the page. So then they click up and, instead of moving up 1 link, they move to the top link on the page. Eventually, hopefully, they'll try clicking "right", which will move the focus down the page 1 link.
I think this navigation method may actually be a good idea but the fact that Opera is the only browser doing it combined with the fact that it is completely illogical for anyone who has used a mobile browser (or a computer, maybe) makes me think this is a bad idea here in the real world. I wasted way too much time and made way too many frustrating mistakes (leading to more wasted time) before I finally started getting used to Opera's navigation method, lack of accesskeys, and new keyboard shorcuts. But when I eventually gave up on Opera, all of that learning time was wasted because no other browser works like this. As far as I am concerned, Opera should make all of these innovations optional if they want to be taken seriously by users and developers. As you'll see in the next point, they apparently want to be taken seriously.
Opera is not free. I've seen many announcements/advertisements for this new Opera release and I downloaded the thing twice before actually installing it, yet at no point did I ever see anyone mention that the download is a 14-day Free Trial download and that Opera for MS Smartphone is not free. I didn't find out until after installing. When I was told that I had 14 days left in my free trial, I immediately became a bit suspicious because I felt tricked. I still feel this way. If your product is worth buying, you shouldn't hide the fact that buying the product is manditory. I, most people, think of browsers as free products. If Opera wants me to pay for theirs, they're going to need to step up their game. Even if it was free, I wouldn't use nor recommend their MS Smartphone browser, it just isn't ready for primetime.
Added features: Opera has a few cool, new features. The speed of the browser is often touted but I don't see it. If it is any faster on my phone, it is a marginal boost. Unfortunately, there are bugs that end up making the overall browsing experience slower, more on this further down. I've mentioned the new navigation features/methods in Opera's browser already, and until all browsers work like this, I don't see it as a good feature to have unless you can turn it off. Opera's keyboard shortcuts are nice, once you learn to stop trying to use accesskeys. Well, scratch that. I want accesskeys and refuse to think Opera's removing them is a good thing. However, the "*" shortcut is leads to the best of Opera's added features: full-screen mode. This is a great feature, something I really hope to see other browsers incorporate as soon as possible. Except that I hope they include a scroll bar. Opera doesn't, so I can't call this feature perfect. Another of the features Opera brags about and uses as a selling point is their "fit to screen" display mode. For the most part, it does a pretty good job. It normalizes font sizes, throws out some table and css features, and shrinks image to make them fit on the screen. MS' IE for smartphone does something similar by default but Opera does a slightly better job of it in most cases. When this feature is turned off, the browser is actually a bit more powerful than IE in javascript support, among other things. IE's default display mode is somewhere between Opera's 2 modes and there are pages where each of the above modes produces a better experience. Toggling between Opera's modes is simply a matter of clicking the "#" button, making it a snap to find the best mode for a page you're viewing. Another great feature is Opera's multiple window support. I can't believe no other browsers are doing this, it really should be a baseline requirement at this point, like tabs on a desktop browser.
If Opera for MS Smartphone was free, I would recommend it because having another tool in your browsing arsenal would come in handy for some pages. But Opera isn't free. And it isn't worth paying for. Maybe it is on other platforms, but not on an MS Smartphone. It feels like a beta release too often. I've had Opera tell me a domain couldn't be found when IE found it fine. I've had trouble connecting to the internet when IE (and other internet apps) could connect without a problem. I've had Opera completely lock up and had to kill it via task manager. If the browser is faster but can't find the page or connect the the net, it isn't really faster overall, is it? These problems could all be attributed to the OS but other, more important ones, are bad design choices that Opera has made.
MS Smartphones, by default, are equipped to play WMV files if you want to watch video. And I do. Being able to download and stream WMV is a requirement on MS Smartphones. Period. If you can't do that, don't bother telling me you have a browser for MS Smartphone because you don't. And Opera's MS Smartphone browser doesn't play mms links, so no wmv streams.
And it doesn't support downloading. WHAT? No downloads?
This is one of those moments where I find it hard to express myself without cursing. There are a few 4-letter words I would use to describe this sort of software, "beta" being the only nice one.
So if you're don't mind a browser that doesn't support video, Opera might still be useful for you. If you can get used to the navigation methods you'll have to learn to use. Not having accesskeys support is bad, not being able to click "down" to move the focus down the page to the next link makes this worse, but whenever I fill out a form on Opera, I start hating the browser a little more. To get focus on a textbox, you click the box. Then you type your username, email or whatever, then you have to click down twice to get out of the textbox, but that takes you to the last link/input on the page, not to the next textbox (which is pretty much always where you want to go). So then you have to click left to get back up to the next textbox. If you're only dealing with a username/password form, this convoluted process only happens once. If you're on a longer form, you'll have to go through this for each and every text field, quite simply unacceptable in my eyes. Even worse, if you're used to the way some other popular mobile browsers work, you are used to clicking a textbox to type in it and then clicking it again to stop typing. In Opera, when you click a textbox while typing in it, you submit the form. What a headache.
Opera 8's home page is pretty lame and I can't find a way to change it so this also adds time to my browsing experience, yet another reason why I can't really consider Opera's speed as a factor. I do like the speed of their bookmark/history/address bar page but until they add an "import favorites from IE" function, I find it hard to consider this a real effort towards winning over MS Smartphone users. IE has all my favorites already (and some of them are a royal pain to type in again) and is free. Think about it.
I was excited that Opera finally stepped to the plate and released a MS Smartphone browser. But then I found out (after installation) that it wasn't free. And then I found out it isn't very good at anything other than displaying text and images on the screen. Any page with a form would cause me to close Opera and launch IE. Any videos I want to watch (and I watch video on my phone frequently) will force me to use IE because Opera won't stream wmv. And Opera refuses to download ANYTHING?!?! Sorry, I can't even take this browser seriously.
How can I buy a piece of software to replace a free competitor when I can't take your product seriously?