According to May numbers from analytics service StatCounter, Opera is once again the most popular mobile browser in the world, narrowly overtaking the iPhone's built-in Safari browser. Of all the webpages that were loaded in mobile browsers in May, Opera had a 24.6% share to the iPhone's 22.3%. Nokia came in 3rd with 17.9%.

Opera started the year ahead of the iPhone browser, but Apple's product passed it in February. Although they're both mobile browsers, we're comparing two very different products here.

Opera is supported on a huge number of devices from different mobile carriers worldwide, while Safari only runs on the iPhone. In effect, the competition doesn't tell us as much about which browser is the better product as it does about how popular the iPhone is compared to other devices.

Opera has released the second public beta of Opera Mobile 9.5. There are two major changes since the last beta release. First, Opera Mobile 9.5 is available for Symbia UIQ as well as Windows Mobile devices. And second, the browser now supports Opera Widgets.

Widgets for mobile devices don't necessarily work the same way as widgets on a full sized computer. You can't fit a bunch of widgets on a 2 or 3 inch screen at the same time the way you can with desktop widgets. So what exactly is an Opera Mobile Widget?

Basically, it's a one-click web application. Rather than launching your mobile web browser and navigating to a page, you can click a widget icon and access a web page or application designed to work well with the Opera Mobile browser. Right now there 5 widgets available, including a clock, weather app, and Twitter application. The advantage of using widgets instead of bookmarks is that you can save the icons on your home screen or in a widget directory and you can access them with a single click.

Opera Mobile 9.5 also features the ability to view the full desktop version of web pages or zoom in for a closer look, much as you can do with Safari for the iPhone or the Google Android web browser.

The browser is free while in beta. No word on when the final version will be released, but there's a good chance that it will cost about $30 when it is available. That's the price Opera typically charges for its mobile browser. Of course, if Mozilla manages to push out Firefox mobile before then, Opera might feel the need to drop the price a bit.

A year and a half after introducing an innovative web browser for Windows Mobile, Microsoft is killing the project. Back before there was an Opera Mini 4 or an iPhone version of Safari, the Deepfish web browser offered a way to display full desktop views of web pages on a tiny browser, allowing you to zoom in on the area you want to read.

The browser was developed by the Microsfot Live Labs team and was never released to the general public. But I wouldn't be surprised if some Deepfish code has found its way into the upcoming Internet Explorer Mobile 6.

In a blog post, the developers behind Deepfish say the goal was never to build a complete browser, but rather to show that an innovative user interface could make for better mobile browsing. The team also implies that Deepfish helped inspire the development of full desktop views in other browsers like Safari, Opera Mini, and Opera Mobile.

You can check out a video shot early last year of Deepfish in action after the jump.

[via jkOnTheRun and My Today Screen]

Opera Mobile 9.5 beta is out today, and it's already the slickest web browser available for Windows Mobile devices. Opera has always been faster than Pocket Internet Explorer at quickly rendering web pages, but Opera Mobile 9.5 beta does a far better job of displaying web pages quickly and accurately than the last stable version, Opera Mobile 8.65.

Probably the most dramatic difference between Opera Mobile 9.5 beta and earlier versions of the software is the support for full desktop page views. In other words, you can see a complete web page pretty much exactly as you would on a desktop. Of course, most web sites aren't designed for cellphones and PDAs with screens as small as 320 x 240 pixels. So The text is pretty much unreadable in this view. But you can drag and drop the screen to find the portion you want to read and a little double click action zooms in and makes the text nice and readable. In other words, Opera Mobile 9.5 beta works a lot like the Safari browser on the iPhone.

The updated browser is also designed to make the most of your device's screen real estate. By default, Opera functions in full screen mode, with no toolbars at the top or bottom of your page. If you need to switch tabs, enter a URL, or hit the back button, you just tap on a small, semi-transparent arrow that hangs out near the bottom of your screen to bring up a menu.

Opera Mobile 9.5 is still in beta, and there are a few known issues. For example, one of the biggest improvements Opera has planned is support for Flash Lite 3 which will allow users to view YouTube movies and other Flash video content. But ActiveX is disabled in this beta release, and that means Flash plugins are disabled and embedded video streams will not play.

Opera Mobile 9.5 is available for free while in beta, and is designed for Windows Mobile 5.0 and Windows Mobile 6. You should also make sure to install the browser to your device's main memory, as Opera reports that installing to a memory card could cause problems.

For a long time, NetFront was the reigning champ of Windows Mobile and PocketPC web browsers. While Pocket Internet Explorer comes standard with most Windows Mobile phones and PDAs, the browser renders pages slowly, lacks support for tabs, and doesn't handle AJAX very well. NetFront does all of those things and more. And if it weren't for the introduction of Opera Mobile a few years ago, which has the same features plus speedier page rendering, we would still heartily be recommending NetFront.

But ACCESS, the company behind the NetFront browser is working hard to keep up with Opera. This week ACCESS released the second concept version (or beta) of NetFront 3.5 for Windows Mobile. When the final version is released you'll have to pay for this browser, but while it's in beta, it's free and definitely worth checking out. Here's a short list of updates in the latest version:

• Improved CPU usage
• AutoCruise function has been removed
• Faster page rendering
• Faster page zooming
• Faster scrolling
• Faster switching between rendering modes (landscape or portrait, single column or desktop style)

The beta will expire on August 31, 2008. Note that you should install NetFront to your device's main memory, not to a storage card or you may experience some stability issues.

Opera plans to show off its next generation mobile web browser at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week. While Opera Mobile 9.5 won't be available commercially until this spring, the company has released a video previewing some of the browser's more exciting features.

Opera also has a tendency to release public betas of its mobile software several months in advance of a commercial release. So there's a good chance you'll be able to use Opera Mobile 9.5 beta for free for a while before buying it.

In a nutshell, Opera Mobile 9.5 appears to have many of the features that have made Opera Mini popular. But unlike the Java-based Opera Mini, Opera Mobile is designed to run on Windows Mobile and Symbian phones. Opera Mobile 9.5 allows users to view full screen versions of web pages, or to zoom in for more detail. You also get tabbed browsing, fast page rendering, and convenient bookmark, transfer, and history managers.

The browser will also include a mobile version of Opera's widget engine which allows you to access some web content like Flickr images without opening a web browser. It also packs Flash Lite 3 integration for accessing Flash-heavy web pages like MySpace or YouTube.

[via the::unwired]

While mobile web browsers have come a long way in recent years, so has the web. Today's mobile browsers like Opera Mini and Safari for the iPhone let you zoom in and out of web pages and let you scale text and images to fit on a small screen. You can even watch some web video. But mobile browsers still have a tough time handling pages that make heavy use of Ajax, Flash 9, JavaScript, and other modern technologies.

Skyfire is a new browser for Windows Mobile smartphones launching in private beta at this week's DEMO 2008 conference. The Skyfire team claims that the mobile browser is the first to support Flash 9, and as you can see in the video above, the browser seems to handle YouTube and other multimedia content much the same way a desktop browser would. You don't have to download and convert files to view them or open them in a separate video player.

According to Webware, the way Skyfire achieves this is by acting as a proxy browser. In other words, the Windows Mobile application isn't really a full web browser. Instead, Skyfire hosts an application on its servers that does all of the hard work of rendering the web content and then delivers it to the client software on your phone. On the one hand, this makes it easy to deliver full web content to the underpowered device in the palm of your hand. On the other hand, we're a bit concerned about what would happen if Skyfire actually becomes popular and the company's servers start to get hammered by users making web requests from their mobile phones.

Skyfire currently supports Windows Mobile 5.0/6 phones with full QWERTY keyboards. A Symbian client is coming soon.