Opera Mini is a good little browser

I've recently been musing about what mobile device to buy. The bottom line is that nothing is perfect. The question has generated dozens of comments, probably as many private emails, and even spawned a discussion on Mobile Tech Roundup.

Meanwhile, Hugh Roper asked if I'd ever tried Opera Mini on my Sony Ericsson T638 (the phone I "dropped back" to after my Razr died a watery death). I hadn't and was pleasantly surprised.

Opera Mini is available for a large number of mobile phones and PDAs. I found it to be far superior to the default browser that Cingular packages on their phones. Of course, that's not a stretch since I'd concluded that not browsing at all was superior to that experience. Cingular's browser is useful for one thing: buying ringtones from Cingular. It's less of a browser than a special purpose ringtone selling client.

One of the things I wanted to be able to do with an improved mobile device was play with Dave Winer's news river experiment. That works fine in Opera Mini, even on a T638. My only complaint is that it's sloooooooow. Not the connection, but the device itself.

I'm still in the market for a mobile palmtop computer. I've gotten lots of advice and have yet to make a decision. I'd like something I can use as a modem from OS X, has good performance, and does EDGE. Mobile browsing and other apps are more important than email to me. If the Treo 700 were available as a GSM device, I'd be tempted to go that way--even though I hate how they look.