Opera Mobile vs. Nokia S60 browser – new browser war?

I guess it all has started from The Register controversial columnist Andrew Orlowski’s review of Nokia E70. The article has been commented on some blogs, including Opera PR Manager Eskil Sivertsen’s blog.

Tero Lehto wrote in his blog in relation to that, that "Pohjoismaiseen kulttuuriin ei ole tavallisesti kuulunut kilpailevan tuotteen avoimella loanheitolla" ("Openly throwing dirt at the competing product does not normally belong to Nordic countries’ culture.")

It is very sad indeed. I know souls behind both browsers, and I know that there are very talented and hardworking people in both teams and they are doing  their best to deliver the perfect mobile browsing experience to the end users.

I’ve decided to compare Opera and Nokia OSS browsers to find out which one is better.

I’d like to mention right away, that this comparison is very subjective. I’ve used Nokia N93 with 10.0.025 firmware for testing. I’ve installed Opera 8.65 EMEA for S60 3rd Edition. I used Elisa 3G network and my home WLAN as connection.

Opera browser I used only in desktop mode. Unfortunately small screen mode arranges information on the page in a way that is considerably different to what you see on the PC, so it is changes the experience. And both browsers I used in landscape mode.

I’ve compared usability of the pages that I visit from mobile most often:

Web site	Nokia OSS	Opera
www.yle.fi/uutiset	OK	OK
www.ft.com	OK	Menu on the left site is impossibly slow. Navigation on the site overall is very slow.
www.gazeta.ru	OK	OK
www.bloglines.com	Runs out of memory if too many posts in blog.	Columns are rendered a bit strange – narrower than the page. Runs out of memory  if too many posts in blog.
gmail.com (basic html, not a mobile version)	OK	OK
www.fmi.fi	OK	OK
www.ytv.fi	OK	OK
www.anekdot.ru	Text is wider than screen, impossible to read – requires constant horisontal scrolling	Text is wider than screen, impossible to read – requires constant horisontal scrolling
www.fontanka.ru	OK	OK
www.economist.com	OK	OK
www.kauppalehti.fi	OK	OK
www.eqonline.fi	OK	Sometimes part of valuable information is obscured by other page elements
www.morningstar.fi	OK	OK

So from my experience both browsers render pages almost equally good, but Nokia browser has faster and smoother scrolling. I’ve summarised my other impressions from this experiment below.

What I like in Opera:

– go to page helper (although idea copied from OSS browser, it is developed even further)
– shortcuts are visible in the menu, so it is possible to learn them
– default local page

What I don’t like in Opera:

– scrolling is very slow and jumpy, especially while trying to scroll when images are still being loaded
– no search in bookmarks
– no search in dropdown lists
– inconsistency with S60 UI style guide
– price
– lack of autocomplete feature for input fields

What I like in Nokia OSS Browser

– rendering and scrolling speed
– minimap (I think it is just brilliant, but that is a question of religion)
– "mouse" navigation
– graphical history

What I don’t like in Nokia OSS Browser

– lack of  tips or tutorial – e.g. who knows that ‘1’ activates bookmarks view, ‘2’ activates search, ‘5’ activates window selector, ‘8’ activates full screen mini map, ‘9’ – go to dialog, ‘*’ and ‘#’ – zoom in/out.
– lack of autocomplete feature for input fields

Opera is clearly the best browser for S60 2nd edition and earlier releases. But with new Nokia OSS browser on S60 3rd edition devices it is difficult to find strong arguments for the users to pay for an alternative browser.

Competition is always good for consumers, and it would be really interesting to see how both browsers develop in the future.