Opera 8.5 beta on WM5 - it is certainly different from the WM2003(SE) version and is working GREAT!

http://opera.com/products/mobile/products/winmobileppc/

Now that I am a proud owner of a shiny, new Dell Axim x51v running WM5, with the latest, A06, ROM version*, the first application I jumped at was, of course, Opera, the new browser for the Pocket PC, to finally find out whether the WM2003(SE) version is more unreliable than the WM5 one. You may well remember that I've, along with a lot of other Pocket PC users, have found the beta version of Opera 8.5 pretty unreliable after scrutinizing it on two of my pre-WM5 devices. Also, if you cast a glance at Opera-related threads, you can clearly see there're clearly two kinds of users: according to half of the users, Opera rocks, and the other half says (like me in my WM2003(SE)-based review) it needs a lot of bugfixes/improvements. Now, you'll see everybody is right: if you test/use it on a WM5 device, you'll find it excellent and if you test it under WM2003(SE), you won't necessarily do the same. I've played with the two versions on my PDA's a lot (in addition to the x51v, the WM2003SE Pocket Loox 720 and the WM2003 iPAQ 2210) and found out that the two versions (WM5 and pre-WM5) are indeed different, the WM5 version being far more reliable and dependable. It hasn't crashed on me at all and hasn't ever stopped transferring pages/resources, unlike the two other, pre-WM5 devices. This means I was right in my first review: the beta version indeed has problems on WM2003/WM2003SE devices - or, at least, on the Pocket Loox 720 and the HP iPAQ 2210. The WM5 version is considerably more reliable. Differences between the versions - tests you also should run to see the difference It was pretty hard to find pages that always or almost always produce different results with the two versions. There're some of them here: http://speedshop.hu On SE, the contents of the lower frame never arrives: click for screenshot click for screenshot On WM5, it always arrives: click for screenshot http://mail.yahoo.com Yahoo Mail (not the Wap version - see this for an explanation of the differences) has always worked (meaning to be able to log in and getting to reading the messages) with WM5; with SE, in only about 20-30% of the cases. In the other 70-80% of the cases, it just stalled at fetching a resource and a refresh, as usual, didn't help. Give it a try - it's certainly worth it. http://www.redhotpawn.com/ RedHotPawn.com, the online JavaScript-based chess game: while it's working flawlessly on WM5, on SE, it almost always stalls. It's very rarely that you can log into your account and can play/continue a game. If you can even log in, in most cases it doesn't even render the playing field properly and doesn't download the JavaScript code (because it doesn't download all the resources/the entire main page), so you can't even move, as can be seen in this screenshot. With the WM5 version, it works just great - I've tested this with numerous refreshes/turns. The same happened to my WM2003 iPAQ 2210 (freshly hard reset, no other apps installed, everything at its default value). It always stops transfers with the "Completed request". For example, I wasn't ever able to log in into the Red Hot Pawn service (I have never managed to get past this screen - trying to open the "1 games waiting" link in another window has, for example, resulted in a stalled connection). http://www.stopdesign.com/ It stalled too once; clicking Articles produced first a stalling and this dialog. Then, after switching to using GPRS, it loaded and, later, I haven't run into the same problem again. You may want to give it a try though. WM5 had no such problems. Note that stalling, in a lot of cases, also means you can't even switch back to the window of Opera from another task by activating the Opera task again, just as can be seen in this screenshot. Note the title of the window - it tried to switch back to Opera but the content of the window remained that of the Running processes dialog. The task is, as can also be seen in here, isn't responding. Unfortunately, in cases like this, only a reset help because it's impossible to kill the process from the operating system's standard process manager either. If you're lucky, bringing up the Keyboard SIP, clicking Ctl and, then, clicking Q (that is, sending the Ctrl-Q command) while the focus isn't in any text input field will also exit the application - but not if you've already switched to another application. Generic problems affecting both (WM5 and WM2003(SE)) versions http://lehto.net/blogi/ - both (WM5/WM2003) versions often render only the first page (see this SE screenshot and this WM5 screenshot). This is how it should render the page. Certainly worth a try. There're some (very rare) misplaced stuff, in "Fit to screen" mode, independent of the OS (BTW, here, you can also see the font problem under WM2003SE): SE screenshot and WM5 screenshot at http://www.ppc-welt.info/community/forumdisplay.php?f=42 . These pages are, of course, rendered correctly in the non-fit mode. I'd also add that the download speed to external memory cards could be made a bit more efficient. Right now, other browsers / download utilities are, generally, faster than Opera when downloading (say, binary) files straight to a storage card. Please see this article for more information on this, along with my benchmarks. The biggest problem, as far as usability is concerned, is switching between windows - this has, however, been pointed out a number of times so I don't go into this. Finally, the file chooser input button (which works with, say, NetFront 3.3 TP 1.03) isn't supported by Opera. You can check it for example here or any webmail (I've tested Yahoo Mail). Testing methology Please note that I've done the tests the following way: I've hard reset my Pocket Loox 720 and didn't install anything on it (didn't even set up an ActiveSync partnership). All I've done was pairing with my Sony-Ericsson T610 and adding a BT GPRS connection so that I can dial in. I've done this to find out whether 1. it's a third-party app that makes Opera on the WM2003SE so unreliable. The answer is no: the browser had exactly the same problems with a non-freshly hard reset PL720 too. 2. it is because of the ActiveSync Internet pass-through that it often stalls. The answer is, again, no: it stalled as often using GPRS as with the ActiveSync Internet pass-through and produced exactly the same problems. I've done the same with the iPAQ 2210 - hard reset and only installing Opera on it. I've installed Opera into the main memory and didn't tweak \Application Data\Opera\opera.ini. I've also tried resetting the PDA's between page loads and also routinely deleted \Application Data\Opera\cache4 both by hand and from the app, as with the cookies/history, on Menu/Tools/Settings/Advanced. Also note that the "Courier new" non-proportional character set was also used after a hard reset on the PL720 in many pages (and in the address bar). On the WM2003 iPAQ 2210, Opera used proportional character sets all the way - as with WM5. Finally... Yup, I was right in the first review - the WM2003(SE) version, of which I've written about (I assumed the WM5 version is as (un)reliable as the WM2003(SE) one), is much more unreliable than the WM5 one. The WM5 version, on the other hand, is clearly the best, by far the fastest and compatible browser (if we forget about the lack of the file upload and the additional technologies like Java/Flash) right now, if a bit lacking advanced features like link copy or in-page text search. I don't think Opera should release the WM2003(SE) version without major bugfixes. The WM5 version "only" needs additional stuff and a usable, preferably tab-based page switch mechanism. Hardware manufacturers could even make a deal with Opera because this browser could be the "killer app" on WM5 that is alone worth getting a new, WM5-based Pocket PC if Opera doesn't release the pre-WM5 versions :) PS: *: upon upgrading the ROM from A04 to A06, my desktop computer reset itself at about 95% of the transfer. The PDA has, consequently, announced (in very bad English - it seems the bootloader hasn't been written by native English people) the connection having been broken. Fortunately, this was still at the transfer phase, not the actual reflashing; a hard reset simply fixed this. The next ROM update transfer didn't cause any desktop reset. EDIT (21:44 CET, the same day): of course, there're a lot of other pages the WM2003(SE) version will also stall at; it's just that I've found the above URL's the best to reproduce the bug the easiest on my Pocket PC's and Internet connections. It's not guaranteed the ones will stall your particular WM2003(SE) device: see for example igalan's latest comment in this thread. However, it's worth trying. It seems the bug is related to some fundamental difference between the networking (most probably, some timing difference) of pre-WM5 and WM5 devices. This is why pre-WM5 devices very often stall with Opera, while WM5 devices don't. I don't think it's a protocol-level bug; I'll, however, scrutinize the HTTP traffic to see what is really happening. Finally: I've already posted this to the original, WM2003(SE) Opera review, but must be emphasized here too because this is one of the most frequently asked questions: how can you set back the Windows Mobile system to use PIE, after you uninstall Opera? It's pretty easy: just import this registry file. Note that you can find a detailed review of what registry editors are capable of importing reg. files here. EDIT (Jan/26/2006): In the meantime, I've managed to test the application on an iPAQ 1940 too. It behaved in exactly the same way as on the iPAQ 2210 and the Pocket Loox 720, which means it's indeed the WM2003 version's being buggy that causes the browser stalling/stopping on pre-WM5 devices. There is another, pretty important thing I still haven't mentioned, but is definitely worth considering: the browser uses non-standard GUI widgets; most importantly, text input fields/textareas and scrollbars. Using custom text input fields/textareas not only means you won't be able to cut/copy/paste when you use an external keyboard with the traditional Ctrl-X/C/V keys, but also the following:

1. you won't be able to use the traditional Ctrl-Left/Right Arrow keys either to quickly skip words
2. you won't be able to use the traditional Shift-Arrow keys either to highlight text using the keyboard
3. you can't jump to the beginning/to the end of the document with Ctrl-Home/End keys

In addition, Opera has severe slowdown problems with text input fields/areas that call JavaScript code (for example, to call storeCaret() from the subBlue.com BB libraries) for onselect/onclick/onkeyup events. Affected Pocket PC sites are, for example, PDAMania.hu. Finally, one of the most important problem is that you won't see all the previous rows in the textarea components. Let's have a look at this screenshot. I've pasted the previous paragraph in it. See what I mean? EDIT the same day, 11:38 PM CET: the above-mentioned textarea input slowdown is (also) caused by animated GIF smiley icons on the same screen. If they are scrolled out of the active viewport, the text input becomes much faster. That is, the culprit may be the heavy slowdown caused by animated images. I'll continue benchmarking the application in this respect.