We had written about some salient features of Opera Mini web browser couple of months back and the great features of this piece of software has again compelled us to tell you more about it.

Well, Opera Mini 4.2 provides you smooth, sleek and optimized browsing experience. The browser uses a remote server to pre-process the web pages before delivering them to your cell phone. It has the capabilities to optimize the web content to make your mobile browsing experience swift and cheap.

In addition, the browser has some really nice features like customization, skinning, download management, bookmarks and browsing history. Moreover, Opera Mini 4.2 “recognizes” your phone and makes adjustments in the web content to provide you an enhanced browsing experience.

If you are really impressed after reading the above specs, download Opera Mini 4.2 and enjoy its cool features.

We’ve learnt from sources that Taiwanese Telecom company Chunghwa is planning to offer HTC Sapphire Android phone in the second quarter of 2009. HTC’s first Android phone, G1, has been a great hit and now they are all set to launch their second Android phone Sapphire which would probably be officially announced in Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona in mid of February.

Launch of an Android based phone by Chunghwa Telecom would really boost Android’s ambitions to gain grounds in Asian market, probably the largest mobile market in the world.

According to reports, the details of new RC33 Firmware 1.1 update have been made available. T-Mobile G1 users have already started receiving this update on their phones. RC33 firmware update contains some new features like Android Market’s application update check, Google Voice Search and capability to save MMS messages photos.

RC33 update also contains a number of bug fixes. One of these bug fixes is email app fix, which would enable the email app to deal properly with Comcast email and would help the app to exit normally without showing a “Force Close” popup. A fix has been made to help IM sessions to withstand WiFi on and off statuses. There was a bug in calendar reminder module, that has also been addressed in this update.

So looks like Android team is striving hard to make their OS as smooth as possible. Good going!

Pragmatic Programmers series has come up with a book on Android development. The book has been named Hello, Android.
People who have gone through some programming language, must have this idea that every programming tutorial or class starts with a “Hello word” like program for beginners. So as the name of this book suggests, the book covers all the basic topics like building a trivial Android application besides covering advanced topics like location based services (GPS) and cell-tower triangulation. The book is available in PDF format for $22 but the best thing is you can have some selected chapters (like building User Interfaces and 2D graphics) for FREE.

Another good book for those who are interested to study T-Mobile G1 from a beginner’s level, is “T-Mobile G1 for Dummies”. It covers a wide range of topics on different aspects of T-Mobile G1 and of course, it has been written for those who are at “dummy” level.

BioWallet is a strong and state-of-the-art authentication application for Android phones. The app is based on iris recognition system and serves as a strong authentication layer. To use the application, you’ll have to save an image of your eye using phone’s camera. BioWallet will save the image as a reference and will only grant access if it finds an exact match between the saved image and “comparison” iris image. The biometric security feature makes BioWallet an efficient and strong password manager.

There is a news stating that Samsung would unearth its Android based phone this year for US customers. The said smartphone would be available on T-Mobile and Sprint networks. The real problem with the news is, that it contains very little information about the release date and other technical stuff. Its one of those “an un-named official said” type of news where you are not sure whether it is going to happen?

Nevertheless, the Samsung smartphone (assumingly) would be based on the Omnia’s slab and its release date could be somewhere in mid of 2009. All that can be said at this point is; keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best from Samsung.

We have learnt that T-Mobile is going to offer Android-based G1 phones to some European countries (Germany, Austria and Czech Republic) by the end of January 2009. And to be more precise, German customers will get G1 phones on 2nd of February. The news was shared with Reuters by T-Mobile CEO Hamid Akhvan.

The pricing would be quite interesting as German customers can get the Android powered phones for just 1 EUR on a 2 year contract. Can it get more affordable than this???

Android fans were waiting pretty anxiously for Agora Android phones but to much of their disappointment, Kogan Agora and Agora Pro phones has been delayed indefinitely. The “undesired” announcement about the delay was made by Ruslan Kogan who stated some issues causing the delay. “I’m disappointed to have to tell you that the Kogan Agora has to be delayed indefinitely. One of the potential issues is the screen size and resolution. It seems developers will be creating applications that are a higher resolution than the Agora is currently capable of handling.”

Mr. Kogan was definitely disappointed about the delay and said that his company is trying their best to deliver the quality product to their customers. According to the company information, the customers who had placed a pre-order for the phone, would get the refund within seven days.