The folks at Opera have released their new web browser for Android, dropping the Presto browser engine in favor of webkit, which is also used in Chrome and the AOSP browser. The beta build is available for download from Google Play, and it's got quite the list of features.
There's a new "Discover" panel which sorts popular articles from the web, an all new Speed Dial, Off-Road mode for times when your connection is a bit bad, tabbed browsing, and more.
Keep in mind that this is a beta product, and even Opera notes:
The beta version launched today, the first iteration of the new generation of Opera browsers for smartphones, will give developers and first-movers in the mobile-app world access to Opera's latest offering for Android users.
To be honest, there's clearly an iOS influence across the UI, though there are Holo elements in the formatting - here's hoping that Opera sees fit to expand this before the final Android release.
Off-Road Mode is the new moniker for the bandwidth-saving server caching that Opera Mini utilized, but it's now user-selectable via the primary menu. The Discover tab is a dynamic news reader that updates automatically, but can be manually configured. Its layout is reminiscent of Flipboard.
Other beloved features from the heavy desktop version, like pop-up blocking, a built-in download manager, and Opera Link for bookmark and settings sync are present as well, though the latter didn't work for us just yet.
Let us know what you think in the comments - can the old dog learn a few new tricks?
We'll be taking a closer look at the new browser, in the meantime if you're the adventurous type you can download it at the Google Play, and hit the break for a short product video and the full press release.
