Virgin Mobile gets Opera Mini, "Connect"

Virgin Mobile subscribers. The company has made two relatively big announcements at CTIA, both of which directly benefit the consumer. First up: Opera Mini. It’s one of the most popular, not to mention most universal, mobile Web browsers on the market. This is apparently made possible by Virgin’s acquisition of Helio last year. Opera Mini is currently used by more than 20 million people worldwide, and that number will surely grow as it is exposed to Virgin’s many subscribers. Beyond a superior mobile browsing experience, Opera Mini version 4.2 offers a number of user-oriented enhancements. A personal favorite is the ability to sync bookmarks with a personal computer. That makes life a lot easier when browsing on a mobile phone. Opera Mini will be compatible with many Virgin phones, including the Slash, Shuttle, and Arc, plus postpaid handsets like the Ocean 2. Virgin’s other announcement is “Connect,” a social networking dashboard. We originally discussed Connect back in December, but apparently it was only available to postpaid customers at the time. The service is now available for all Virgin Mobile customers. It appears this is going to be mainly for Virgin’s higher-end devices like the X-tc, Jax, and Shuttle. Rather than a social network in itself, Connect is a portal of sorts, allowing users to access various social networking sites. These include the uber-popular Facebook and MySpace platforms, plus social content sites like flickr and YouTube. Connect also integrates an RSS reader, items from which friends can share. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that Connect will work with Twitter…yet. Both services are free for Virgin Mobile subscribers who utilize a data plan. These can run as little as $10 per month for 50 MB of data. ]]>