Opera's various mobile browsers have been go-to upgrades for years. But several newer competitors—including the excellent Skyfire 1.5 and the Java-based BOLT 1.6—have moved the bar forward. Opera Software's latest Windows Mobile and Symbian browser, Opera Mobile 10 Beta 2, contains a refreshed interface, simple zoom controls, and faster performance. It still lacks Flash compatibility. But it's a worthy download that embarrasses the stock Microsoft and Nokia browsers.

Installation and User Interface
Opera Mobile 10 Beta 2 is a public beta; you can download it now by heading to m.opera.com/mobile from a stock cell phone browser. OM10 works on all versions of Windows Mobile 6.0, 6.1, and 6.5 (Classic or Professional), plus touch screen-only Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC devices. Nokia E-series and N-series owners should grab the Symbian Series 60 version; for a complete list of tested devices, head to www.opera.com/mobile/download from a desktop browser. For this review, I tested Opera Mobile 10 Beta 2 on a Windows Mobile 6.1-powered HTC Touch Pro2 on Verizon's network.

On first boot-up, the browser asked if I wanted to set it as the default browser. The main user interface looks sharp; Opera Mobile 10 Beta 2 adopts the new Opera Mini 5 conventions and looks slick compared with the previous Opera Mobile 9.7 Turbo. Changes include a revamped icon strip across the bottom, plus a Safari 4-like Speed Dial launch page that displays graphic thumbnails for favorite sites. You can add sites to Speed Dial easily by clicking on an empty thumbnail and choosing a link from your recent URL history. The bottom icon strip contains five icons: Back, Forward, Stop, Tabs (for switching between individual page windows or creating a new one), and Settings.

The address bar features auto-complete, which makes keying in URLs simple. Tabs button displays a cascaded view of currently open pages, and offers an option to open a new page. Meanwhile, the Settings button brings up a revamped, two-row bar populated with finger-friendly, colorful icons. They include buttons for organizing bookmarks, checking page history, viewing saved pages and downloads, and the usual find and help functions. Drill down further and you'll find a toggle for Opera Turbo, which compresses pages via the company's own servers before delivering them to the handset. You can also toggle a single-column mobile view, as well as configure zoom levels, privacy settings, and a slick password manager. Finally, Opera Mobile 10 Beta 2 supports Opera Link, which synchronizes bookmarks between mobile devices and the desktop Opera 10 browser.

Page Rendering and Performance
The company isn't kidding about performance upgrades. It claims faster speeds when rendering pages, zooming in and out, panning, and more, with up to a 50 percent increase compared with Opera Mobile 9.7 Turbo. Despite the Turbo feature, the Opera Mobile 10 browser itself isn't proxy based. That means you're not dependent on a reliable connection to the company's servers in order to use the app, like you are with Skyfire 1.5.

The HTC Touch Pro2 includes a slick touch bar that makes zooming in and out of Web pages a snap—but only with the default Opera Mobile 9.5. With the 10 beta, the touch bar stopped working. That's OK, though; touch anywhere on a desktop HTML page and Opera Mobile 10 will zoom in. Once you do that, the Back icon becomes a Zoom Out magnifying glass: touch that, and the page will zoom right out again. Still, the non-functioning zoom bar is another example of why it's tough to fine-tune the user experience when you're supporting many different handset models and OS revisions.

Most desktop pages looked sharp in testing. With USA Today's home page, the browser had enough data over Wi-Fi to return control within nine seconds, though the browser took 51 seconds to deliver the full page. The New York Times home page loaded enough to let me begin reading text and scrolling around within just seven seconds, but also took 54 seconds to finish the download. Turning on Opera Turbo mode reduced these times to four and 35 seconds (for the USA Today page), and nine and 50 seconds (for the New York Times). The PCMag.com home page took 12 seconds and 63 seconds, respectively.

While scrolling speeds are improved, and the kinetic scrolling is welcome, it can still feel sluggish while pages are still loading, even over a 3G connection. Once the page is fully loaded, scrolling was fast, and didn't leave gaping holes the way Skyfire 1.5 does when rendering only visible pieces of pages. The browser also supports rich formatting for Gmail, Facebook, and other desktop sites.

Quirks and Conclusions
The Touch Pro2's super-sharp 800-by-480-pixel touch screen made page fonts and graphics look nearly perfect in Opera Mobile 10. As before, Flash content still isn't supported, so you'll see either an empty box or a prompt to install an Adobe Flash player (which won't work). In one case, the CNN home page never finished loading; it could have been because of the unfinished Flash player box, but it was hard to tell.

Clicking on links was a little fiddly. Holding down your finger for several seconds pops up a menu that lets you select text or open the link in a new page. But getting just the right tap to click on a link was tougher than it should have been. Most of the time, the browser thought I wanted to select the link text instead of the link itself.

Despite those qualms, Opera Mobile 10 remains a refined, slick browser that takes full advantage of the HTC Touch Pro2's high-resolution screen. It has more features than Skyfire 1.5 and feels better thought out. But OM10 lacks Skyfire 1.5's Flash and Silverlight support, faster page loading, and smooth, full-screen video streaming from YouTube and other popular sites. Skyfire's main downside is its proxy-based design; if the app can't connect to the company's servers for whatever reason, it does nothing. And since Opera Mobile 10 Beta 2 and Skyfire 1.5 are both free and have very small storage footprints, you might as well download both.

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