Latest Opera Mini adds BlackBerry-centric browsing goodness

Blackberry fiends looking for a better Web browser to replace RIM's in-house solution have been able to use a mobile version of Opera called Opera Mini since late last year. The latest beta of the browser got an interesting refresh this morning, adding a slew of handy features, including a new landscape mode that's turning phones on their sides. Literally.

The new feature will let you browse sideways, making use of the taller screens on phones like the Pearl. Unlike the iPhone, the lack of an accelerometer in most phones means you have to use a button combination to swap between portrait and landscape modes. There's also a new full-screen mode to let you browse using every glorious pixel on your phone's small screen.

Blackberry users are getting more love with this update, like native phone menus, and "a ton" of optimizations to make pages and Web content load faster. The latest release also features a Desktop-like layout mode, just like the one in Safari for the iPhone, that the company launched in late June.

Besides looks, there's a new custom search creation tool that will let you save any site-specific search into the browser's built-in search tool. For example, while browsing MLB.com, you could add the site's search box to the browser and have it ready to search from in the future--avoiding the need to visit the site first and use up that extra bit of data.

More about the update can be found on Opera's blog. To download it now, go here.

[via Gigaom]

(Credit: Opera Software)