The core difference between two mobile browser versions is how Opera Turbo is handled in the browser. Opera Turbo is Opera’s compression service that reduces the size of web pages by sending the data through an Opera server where they are compressed before they are send to the user’s mobile device.

Smaller data packages means faster page loading times and a reduced bandwidth bill for users who pay by the Megabyte.

Opera Mini 6.5 is now available for new devices (The Android version has been out for a few weeks) including Apple iOS, Symbian, Blackberry and J2ME devices. The big new feature in Opera Mini 6.5 and Opera Mobile 11.5 is a new data counter that allows mobile users to keep tabs on their bandwidth usage. While that may not be exciting for users with flatrates, it may very well make a big difference for consumers who pay by the Megabyte (or capped data plans).

Other improvements include stability and performance fixes, better text selection and auto-correct and spell-check support for iOS devices. Interested users can read up on all the changes at the official Opera Mini blog post.

A blog post over at the Opera Mobile blog informs users about the changes in the release (please note that Opera Mobile 11.5 has been available for some time for Android based devices on the Android Market)

Opera Mobile 11.5 introduces the data usage view on Symbian devices. The new version benefits from an Opera Presto rendering engine upgrade as well.

Opera Mobile users on Symbian devices can access the changelog here. Symbian users can point their browsers to m.opera.com to download the latest version of the Opera Mobile or Opera Mini browser. Browsers may also be available in the Apple App Store and on Android Market.

The rise of mobile devices poses a new challenge for webmasters, who now have ensure that users who visit their sites from mobile devices have the best possible experience doing so.

Opera Mobile Emulator is one tool to aid webmasters in this task. The program emulates Opera Mobile running on various devices on a Windows desktop system.

You need to install Opera Mobile Emulator on Windows before it can be used. It opens up with a configuration screen that you can use to select a pre-configured profile or a custom profile for the emulator.

Available devices are Samsung Galaxy S, HTC Wilfdire, Motorola Droid X, LG Optimus One, Nokia N900 and about a dozen or so others. The resolution is automatically selected for those devices and all that is left for you to do is to click launch to start the emulator.

You can alternatively select custom from the profile drop down to configure a custom resolution, pixel density and input method (touch, keypad, tablet).

The emulator itself behaves like Opera Mobile would on the device, with the benefit that you can use the Windows keyboard and mouse to use it.

The idea behind the emulator is to give webmasters a tool at hand to verify that their websites display as good as possible on mobile devices. It can furthermore be used as a tool during web development to make sure that the website displays fine for a specific device or resolution.

Opera Mobile Emulator is an 11 Megabyte download for Windows, Linux and Mac. Webmasters who want to test how their websites display on various mobile devices should give it a try.

First of, what’s the difference between Opera Mobile and Opera Mini? The core difference is the location of the browser engine. For Opera Mobile 11, the browser engine is located on the mobile device, for Opera Mini, it is located on the Opera server. Opera Mini 6 usually displays websites a lot faster than Opera Mobile does, thanks to the fact that it does not tax cpu and memory that much, and that all data is compressed before it is send to the phone.

The second difference is compatibility. Opera Mini works on nearly every mobile device, Opera Mobile 11 on the other hand has been released only for Android and Symbian, with the possibility that additional devices will be supported in the future (Lab versions are available for Maemo, MeeGo and Windows).

Here is a short video demonstrating some of the capabilities of Opera Mini 6 and Opera mobile 11.

Opera Mobile 11 sports a new modernized user interface that has been optimized for tablet devices. Rendering technologies have been updated with a new Presto rendering engine, better JavaScript performance and support for popular technologies such as HTML5 Video, Adobe Flash support (Android only) and multi-touch events.

Zooming has been improved in several ways, text should for instance stay sharp during zooming. New social networks sharing options have been introduced, as well as a session restore feature and faster framerates when panning and zooming.

A full list of features is available at the Opera Mobile blog.

The list of feature additions is a lot smaller for Opera Mini 6. The mini browser supports a fresh new look and similar content sharing options. The browser supports the popular Youtube video platform now with options to play the Youtube videos on the device’s native media player.

Add to that better font support, an option to open links in the background, improved zoom for touchscreens and a design that has been specifically designed for tablet use.

Opera Mini 6 can be downloaded directly on your phone at http://m.opera.com/. Users who prefer to download it to their PC instead can download Opera Mini 6 from the official website.

Android users can point their browsers to Opera Mini and Opera Mobile on the Android Market

Opera Turbo has been added to the mobile web browser which is a compression technique that is routing Internet traffic through a server that is compressing the contents so that they can be delivered more rapidly to the user. The monthly bandwidth bill will also benefit from Opera Turbo as compressed data reduces the overall bandwidth consumption of the mobile device.

Other improvements in Opera Mobile 9.7 are the improved widget manager which runs independently from the web browser, Google Gears support and hardware acceleration with OpenGL ES support. Opera Mobile 9.7 Beta has not yet been released but it is expected to be released soon. Opera created a speed comparison video between Opera Mobile 9.7 with Opera Turbo enabled, Opera Mobile 9.7 without Opera Turbo and Microsoft IE Mobile.

The loading times differ widely. Opera Turbo speeds up the page loading time of that specific page by more than 20 seconds when compared to Opera Mobile 9.7 without Opera Turbo and an amazing 3 minutes 7 seconds in comparison to Internet Explorer Mobile.

The new Opera 9.5 beta 2 is currently available for Windows Mobile and Symbian UIQ. A release for Symbian S60 phones is planned for 2009. The biggest new feature in this version is the mobile widgets support. Users should not confuse mobile widgets with widgets in desktop versions of Opera because they work and act different which is mainly caused by the limited screen space of mobile phones.

Widgets for Opera mobile are basically one click services that either open a function or website directly. Only a few widgets are currently available including a clock, Twitter or weather information.

Other additions are a new Zoom slider and some user interface and usability improvements in addition to many under-the-hood fixes in the browser core. It is a good time now to test the new Opera mobile browser if you have a mobile device running Windows Mobile or Symbian UIQ.