DS Opera Browser released in roughly 6 hours CET.

[Guden Oden]

Those blighters get it an hour earlier, heh!

I have reserved a copy for myself and my DS lite, I'll give a review later when I've had a chance to check it out...!

 

[darkblu]

great. now ninty need to announce any plans for release in the ntsc territories. or i'll be importing from europe

 

[JacksBleedingEyes]

great. now ninty need to announce any plans for release in the ntsc territories. or i'll be importing from europe

Hopefully it will run better and faster then my pda.

 

[Guden Oden]

Apparantly it's supposed to be pretty slow from what I hear, but hey... If you sit there browsing on a 256*160-something pixel screen, then you have time to wait.

Just 45-ish minutes now until stores open, but I don't think I'm fanatic enough to go buy it that early. Wii, perhaps. The browser will have to wait until around lunch, then I'll see if I can pick up a public wifi network at my favorite pasta restaurant and I'll post a quick review from there!

 

[Corwin_B]

Got it 2 days ago. It's indeed slow, but pretty usable. The virtual keyboard is good, writing recognition could use some work. The dual screen browsing stuff is nice, and you can swap screens easily (X button or an icon).

Don't forget there are 2 versions of this thing, one with a large GBA cartridge for the RAM expansion pack, the other using a custom DSLite format cartridge (just like the vibration cartridge).

 

[Ollo]

I'm guessing you didn't find a network close to your lunch place Guden
I'm eagerly waiting to hear more about the browser. Speed? Useability? Readability? And then all those little details and personal thoughts. Would be much apruciated!

Corwin, are the two versions different besides the different packages?

 

[Guden Oden]

I haven't been able to test the damn thing because my stupid DLink access point won't assign an IP to my DS when I try to connect to it. Guess I'll have to grab the bull by the horns and go buy a suckass mcdonald's burger and rape their open wifi connection instead, or at least I think they have free wifi these days.

 

[Corwin_B]

I had problems with DHCP on my old WiFi router too, which I "solved" by putting a static IP address in the DS configuration.

Regarding the two packages, they are exactly the same apart from the form factor of the expansion RAM cartridge. The "normal" DS RAM cartridge works with both models of DS (but sticks out on the Lite), and the Lite edition only works in DSLite, but doesn't stick out, which is much more elegant.

Regarding speed, it's slow. It's definitely usable for most stuff, though (Google, GMail, Yahoo, blogs, forums...). Browsing through more intensive pages (Ebay, IGN...) starts showing the limits of that browser. To be fair, IGN is also slow as molasses on my Core2 Duo + 2GB DDR800 RAM, so I'd suspect there is a problem with the site itself.

Usability is okay. I dislike the fact that it doesn't keep cookies (it does have bookmarks), and several formats are not supported, including Flash. So it supports less stuff than the PSP browser, but text entry is much easier (virtual keyboard + writing recognition).

Readability is pretty good considering the low resolution of the screens. The dual-screen mode is very nice, and you can change zoom level on the fly.

 

[Arwin]

Would it maybe be interesting to make a movie of browsing B3D using both handhelds? I can do the PSP version and then youtube it or something.

(Of course I'd start another thread for it, to prevent this one from getting hopelessly derailed. )

 

[Ollo]

Sounds promising so far.

Yes, Arwen, that would be nice! If someone has a wifi PDA, that would be nice to compare with as well.

(Really, what I am looking for is some sort of surf pad. I figured I could use my DS until some larger touch screen surf pads come along.)

 

[Corwin_B]

Regarding PDA equivalents, I don't fancy PocketIE (very incomplete, lacks many supports), although I didn't try the one included with WM2005, but I like NetFront a lot. Last time I checked (a couple months ago), the handheld version of Mozilla was an horrible mess, buggy, slow, unstable, and suffering from a very bad interface.

 

[Ollo]

Have you tried a Palm, Corwin? I think they have Opera, but I'm not sure. Perhaps they make all software themselves. I'll try to test a Palm Pilot this weekend.