Opera Mobile Emulator | Hacker News Reader

Opera Mobile Emulator

opera.com

53 pointsdclaysmith11 comments

It'd make my work so much easier if all the major mobile browsers released tools like this (outside their ecosystem's SDKs). Opera and FF are in the unusual position of not being the native choice and are/should do this.

I wonder if there might be reticence, or possibly no incentive, to do so as the apps market is booming. A stronger web might be bad for app-stores in general.

Firefox Mobile has had desktop builds since forever.

Firefox has an emulator too: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/mobile/ (the "Developer Tools" download is just a Fennec.app. It's rather spartan, but does the job)

This is huge contrast with testing in Android Browser:

• requires Android SDK

• launched from commandline (README file explaining that is longer than Info.plist needed to make it runnable with a click).

• needs extra package downloads started manually from withing the SDK

• needs creation of virtual device (with dozen of irrelevant options to fill in that are confusing to newcommers)

• slow as hell

RIM with Windows-only SDK scattered over several packages requiring registration is even worse.

It's about the easiest way to test a website on a mobile browser, in my opinion.

The downloaded .deb is only 32 bit, with no obvious 64 bit option on the page.

I use this at work to go through blocked websites. Better than nothing.

I haven't tried, but I think that enabling Turbo in Opera Desktop might have the same effect?

It should, actually. Unfortunately I can't test this.

I was under the impression that Opera Mobile connected directly to the requested site and Opera Mini passed through Opera's proxy servers. Am I wrong about this?

Yes, that is correct. Opera Mobile connects directly to the requested sites, unless you enable Opera Turbo, which makes Opera Mobile use the Opera Mini servers.

how close does it emulate the websites on feature phones like Nokia, Samsung and other feature phones?

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