With the bad news that Opera Mobile for Android might only be available if the mobile or OEM company decides to bundle it comes some good news. Yup, the first beta of Opera Mini 5 is here, and for those who wonder... it's not just a J2ME port like before!

No, Opera Mini 5 Beta shines like polished Android for you. In fact you just might overcome much of the disappointment that you may not enjoy Opera Mobile any time soon. If a team within Opera Software can make dreams come true it surely is the innovative and hard working team behind Mini. After installing Opera Mini 5 Beta from the Android Market (it works on my HTC Hero, running Android 1.5) it looks gorgeous. Using red and black as the default color scheme it acts like any native Android application using full touch as well as the menu and back buttons.

So what kind of features can you expect? First of all Opera Turbo, which uses Opera's servers to compress web pages, is part of the package, increasing page loading performance while sending less data. Opera Link and Speed Dial are also familiar faces, where Link allows you to sync bookmarks (and more) and Speed Dial allows you to add several default pages on the new tab and home page. Page zooming works like a charm and uses the familiar double-tap to zoom into areas while you view the web site in an eagle-mode for overview. But there is much more, like find in page, tabbed browsing, landscape mode, a password manager.

In fact if you have an Android phone, you know, from HTC, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, LG, Samsung and all the others, just download it. You won't be disappointed. Isn't the Android world sweet, allowing Opera Software to offer even better alternatives of standard applications?