Anybody tried Opera for Windows Mobile?

I downloaded the trial and spent several days trying it out in various scenarios. I just thought I'd share my observations and thoughts compared to Pocket IE. These are purely subjective, unscientific, observations.

• Better rendering
• Faster rendering
• Slower startup
• Better scrolling performance on large pages
• Worse overall usability

Compared to vanilla IE, the scrolling experience in Opera is much better. However, IE + TouchFlo on my Kaiser (HTC P4550) is a great combination. You get finger scrolling, and "flick" scrolling. The one that I just the most is to plant your finger and slide it to the edge of the screen. It will continue to scroll until you pick up your finger. Want to select text? Just switch to a fingernail or stylus. Both options are always available. With Opera, you only get one option at a time, and you have to dig into the settings to switch.

Also, the address bar in IE actually shows enough of the address to be useful. Opera packs too many buttons on and doesn't show enough of the URL. I use full screen a lot. Opera doesn't have a true full screen mode. You can't hide the tool/address bar, and it's much thicker than the IE one. Who would have thought that a version of IE would end up being better at minimalism.

I also had trouble getting used to the way "back" is handled. In IE it's click the left softkey once to show the UI, and again to go back with the UI switching back to full screen. In Opera it's click the left softkey once to show the UI, then again to open the Action menu, then press up four times to get to back, and then click select. Maybe the UI will switch back to full screen, if it doesn't then you have to go to the view menu and toggle it off and back on.

I wanted to like Opera, I really did. In the end I went back to IE. IE on Windows Mobile has plenty of issues, but it turns out that my browsing habits are better served by the IE's UI.

Anyway, just some "I stayed up way too late" thoughts to start the weekend.