The software is available for download from today from Helio's web portal. Currently it's optimized for the Ocean, but since this is apparently the "start of a beautiful relationship" we may expect to see other versions in the near future.

Opera Mini Surfs on the Helio Ocean
Opera signs first deal with U.S. service provider

Oslo, Norway and Mountain View, CA - March 19, 2008 - Opera, together with Helio, announced the first deployment of Opera Mini on a mobile service provider in the United States. As of today, Helio members can surf the Web with Opera Mini on their Ocean device with a specially-tailored version of the browser designed specifically for the handset.

Available as a downloadable application from Helio's Web portal, Opera Mini is a perfect addition to the Helio Ocean, a sleek and powerful dual-slide device that offers an incredible breadth of functionality. Opera Mini makes browsing on the Ocean even more fun and addictive with an
elegant desktop-like experience that lets the user dive into the page to access the content they want. At the same time, Opera Mini serves pages at lightning speed so it will not slow down the on-the-go mobile experience to which Helio members are accustomed.

"We're always looking to give our members their choice of great applications so we're excited to be the first service provider in the U.S. to make Opera Mini an on-deck option," said Doug Britt, Vice President of Service Management at Helio. "Opera Mini is a tremendous mobile browser. Optimized for Ocean and running on a nationwide 3G network, its a combination that's tough to match."

"Offering Opera Mini underscores Helio's insight into how the mobile industry is evolving," said Rod Hamlin, SVP Sales and Marketing Americas, Opera. "Helio understands their customers' desire for innovative and engaging mobile experiences and answering this demand with a choice in browsers explains why Helio selected Opera Mini."

More than 39 million cumulative users have discovered how Opera Mini can revolutionize their mobile Web experience. Now Helio Ocean users can enjoy all the features and fun of Opera Mini, including Opera Link, a free service that synchronizes your bookmarks, Speed Dial and personal bar between all your Web browsers.

About Opera Software ASA
Opera Software ASA has redefined Web browsing for PCs, mobile phones and other networked devices. Opera's cross-platform Web browser technology is renowned for its performance, standards compliance and small size, while giving users a faster, safer and more dynamic online experience. Opera Software is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with offices around the world. The company is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol OPERA. Learn more about Opera at HYPERLINK "http://www.opera.com" www.opera.com.
Opera Mini Surfs on the Helio Ocean - 2

About Helio
Helio is the mobile brand for the Internet generation. With advanced mobile services, exclusive, high-end, beautiful devices and smart pricing on a nationwide high-speed 3G network, Helio is built for consumers who have mobile at the center of their lives. Helio is a joint venture between
SK Telecom, one of the world's most advanced wireless carriers, and EarthLink, the next generation Internet service provider. www.helio.com.

• Overview mode empowers people to browse their favorite websites
• Zooms in and cleanly focuses on the content you want (as seen in Opera's Wii browser)
• Dynamically changes size of text and images, to read without a lot of scrolling
• A virtual mouse to make it easy to scroll in any direction

Another reason is the cute but dorky video that totally rips on the iPhone for being expensive and, I guess, in all other ways quite similar to Opera's little wunderbrowser. Hey, are they even using the same New York Times page in their promo image above? – Wilson Rothman

Product Page [Opera]

The new technology will add video capability directly into the Web browser, so that users can see and play back video content directly in Opera. As of yet, Opera has not commented on whether or not the new native playback ability for Opera Mobile will be able to play existing Flash content.

Sounds good, except the power of Flash is that everyone uses it, market penetration in browsers is sky high, and what good is yet another browser, esp if its specific to mobile phones?

The right thing to do is for Adobe to develop a server side piece of software that can downscale flash content for Mobile devices, depending on browser, connection, etc. They could get rich, and I can get YouTube on my cellphone browser. Unless YouTube is already thinking about this stuff in transcoding to H.264. – Jason Chen, fact checked by Brian Lam

Infoworld [via Ars Technica]

Easy enough to load up, just go to the Opera Mini website and put in your number to have a download link texted right to you. –Adam Frucci

Product Page [via A Swedish wolf in Norway]

The download is free and works on any Java enabled phone.

Opera Mini [via PC world]