Opera Mini 4.2 for Android brings microSD support and video viewing capability

As I pointed out in a recent post regarding the current firmware on the T-Mobile G1 Google Android device there is a major issue with not being able to store applications or content onto the external microSD card. I get low memory errors daily and if I browse a lot with the device my browser cache fills up to 10MB+. Then when I delete the data I lose all my history, bookmarks, etc. and this really limits my usage of the G1. Opera thankfully announced today that its Opera Mini 4.2 product for the Android platform is out of beta already and available as a full release in the Android Market. The best improvement, IMHO, is the new capability to store web pages and uploads/downloads directly on the microSD card. It looks like I will be dropping the default web browser and using only Opera Mini on my G1.

Other improvements in this latest version include the following:

# Now you can upload and download files through Opera Mini and save pages for offline viewing # Videos will be redirected to the system's video player # Double tap now works for zooming in and out # Inline URL entry instead of using native input # Fixed password text entry to hide characters # Fixed problems with exiting application when back button was pressed # Improved trackball speed # All internal pages, like the start page, now have font size extra large for easier navigation

BTW, did you know the system has a video player integrated into it, yet is not accessible as a separate application? It is there and Opera was able to tap into it to make a better browsing experience. You can now visit YouTube from within Opera (there is a dedicated YouTube player on the G1 too) and other sites with video content (sorry, no Flash support yet for sites like Hulu.com) and view the video using the default system video player.

Now with my new "fatty" 2600 mAh battery I can surf to my heart's delight.

Thanks to PhoneScoop for the heads-up on the news.