Opera Mobile on N900

Just reading thru tweet posts I have been following and found that the dev team from Opera had started a hobbyist project that ports the Opera Mobile 10 to Maemo 5. Without much hesitation, I quickly download it and installed on the phone.

Although it is only in Alpha stage, it is pretty much functional. One thing I noticed is that the rendering speed is fast! Best thing is I can now key in URLs, posts on Facebook & forums IN PORTRAIT mode, which will be the greatest wanted feature for N900 users. One more useful working feature is the Opera Link, where my previously saved bookmarks from my desktop Opera is synchronised with Opera Mobile 10.

While it still contain downsides like poor battery power management and lack of flash, this may be my main browser for some time.

Now Maemo has 2 popular browsers in the platform (Firefox Mobile & Opera Mobile), I'm loving this device more :)

Installing the leaked RC PR1.2 for N900

On my usual checking of the Maemo forums, I noticed yet another thread stating that the long-awaited PR1.2 firmware, which consists of numerous improvements to N900, has been released. Going thru the posts, I noticed that the link is directed to a 3rd party host site (chinese site to be precise). As usual, many posters will starting putting the thread down of another trolling thread.

However when a brave soul downloaded the file and flashed his device, he posted his screenshots proving that the image file is legit, the thread went crazy. Every adventurous (insane to some) mind began downloading the image and flash their devices. Yours truly, me, is one of them.

Took the plunge, flushed my eMCMC storage and flashed the new image, I booted up the device and voila! The device boots up with the new firmware! Some of the changes are shown in the pictures below:


The firmware version


Settings panel now have CLEAR DEVICE for full reset of the device, meaning it will flush the mass storage as well I guess


A "Get more from OVI Store" option is now added to theme selection


Data counter is now split into local and roaming record. Good implementation


Night Mode is now available for Camera in both photo and video mode. Awesome.


And more photo resolutions to choose from compared to only 2 in previous version

Additional observations I have seen are:
- better response in the touch screen
- smoother UI
- search for application in HAM as how you search for contacts
- changed NOW PLAYING icon

In addition, I managed to use Titan's custom kernel to overclock the device to 850MHz without a hitch. everything's running pretty smooth.

However this is a leaked firmware so I'm doing at my own risk. Well, sometimes you get good outcome by taking some calculated risk though. Anyway the links are removed from the forums due to copyright infringement.

Looking at the positive side, this means that official PR1.2 release is pretty near. I will suggest most N900 users to hold their horses and wait for official release if you have no idea what you do.

Posted thru N900 using MaStory