Opera DS "review", special thanks go to me
Now that the Nintendo DS is headed for its third year of life (with the refreshing introduction of the Nintendo DS lite) a lot of great titles have been released. But Nintendo has also seen the other uses of the Nintendo DS other then just plain good o'll gaming. Among new titles such as Brain Age and English Training we now also have the Opera DS browser. And although Japan has been able to enjoy the internet on the DS for much longer then we have in Europe and no Europe release was planned, Nintendo has decided to bless us with a release as well.
As soon as I came back from Rome I went over to our local (hardly) game store and picked up my copy. And although I was already able to internet with my NDS and NDSL (DSlinux with Lynx and retawq, and who knows what next) I was really hoping for a graphically pleasing browsing experience. I've been using Opera on my PC for quite some time now (alongside FireFox), as the perfect replacement for the, in my eyes, bad Internet Explorer. As we all know Opera DS comes with it's own Memory Expansion Unit being not much else then a RAM chip. Dependant on what version of the browser you bought you either have the normal GBA case version or the NDSL-dust cover case. The memory unit is used only for cache. Opera DS sadly does not work without it.
As I already knew that Opera DS was based on the Opera 8.5 core I knew of certain problems with displaying certain pages, such as my site (though close!). But what I was most interested in was how well the Opera DS browser would preform in real life after seeing so many movies of it showing it was very slow. After playing around with it a lot I now check my E-mail with it when not close to my computer (or too lazy to go over to it), and have found that though controls can be somewhat clumsy sometimes (touch screen interaction mainly together with URL input) this is a very nice addition to the DS's functions. As for slow speeds, that is highly dependant on the webpage. When I opened up DCemu.co.uk/ it took about 2 minutes before it was 56/57 loaded (in mode 2), whereas my own photo gallery took less then 12 seconds (though also quite a big page, also in mode 2). This page (my NDS page) loaded fairly quickly for example (in mode 2). And SlashDot.org didn't take very long in mode 1 though in mode 2 it took quite some time.
You can't play video's, flash or Java. Do I mind? No, I feel this is not needed and also quite out of the reach of the DS if you want to do it right. Possibly those things run fine in standalone mode. If you really feel you want flash and etc. I suggest you either buy a laptop or something similar that is powerful enough to run such things while still having a nice interface.
The way Opera has decided to use the DS's dual screens is very good. You have two options; 1. You can use both screens in small screen rendering (SSR) mode or 2. You can use one screen as the "view-screen" and one as the selector. In both modes you can turn of all images.
- 1. SSR (small screen rendering) works by sizing images down (if you
enable the fix width option, something I highly recommend) and
spreading the page out over both screens (top to bottom). If you are
watching a website which is text heavy this is a very good option!
This does however make it feel like you are working on retawq or lynx
(withough table support) but with color( and images).
2. When you are using mode 2 the website looks exactly like it would when you would be running Opera 8.5 on your PC. It really looks great and works with great ease. It is however somewhat slower. In mode 2 you can also switch the two screens (make the lower one the "view-screen" and the top the selector. This makes it easier to click with the stylus on (hot)links.
Opera DS also has it's own bookmarks which are saved on the DS card. So are preferences such as language etc.. And it also has support for Asian fonts! I was able to open the Nintendo Japan webpage without any problems at all.
To sum it all up Opera DS is a very user-friendly application. If you are fond of your DS and are willing to pay 30~45 Euro's to browse the web with your hand-held this is a good choice for you. And although there are indeed some setbacks when it comes to speed and internet functionality (mainly being the inability to run flash, Java or video's) I personally feel that that is no big problem. If you do however want such things to play I highly recommend you let this product slide past you and you go buy some kind of laptop or PDA. One thing I do miss (though I understand why the feature has been let out of Opera DS) is tabs. This is one of the things I always liked in Opera and FireFox.
I hope you all enjoyed my "review" and found it useful.
-Simon van de Berg
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