Comment by tpmx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tpmx | Hacker News Reader

Back in 2004-2006 when we were building the first version of Opera Mini mobile phone usage statistics were really lacking. The mobile phone market was insanely fragmented, and varied so much per country. This was the time when there was like 1-2 new devices launched every day. We had a hard time figuring out exactly which devices to prioritize debugging for.

So I had this idea that we'd do wardriving to figure out what brands (and perhaps even models) were popular in different regions. We got quite far into this idea before abandoning it.

GSM insecurity was a key enabler. If I remember correctly, at that time it was possible to get at least the IMEI via passive eavesdropping, somehow.

The reason we abandoned this idea: A combination of our inhouse lawyer's opinion plus we realized we could just brute-force it by manually testing thousands of devices with a staff of about 5 manual testers of the proper ability. The most productive person we hired for that role was 60+. She had previously worked as COBOL programmer for a local bank.

I guess this could illustrate a key difference between a bay area company and a nordic company, at the time...

> 2004-2006 when we were building the first version of Opera Mini mobile phone usage statistics

Hi, I just wanted to say that Opera Mini was such a major part of my life, and I'm sure I speak for many others as well. I was in Sri Lanka at the time, and those Java apps enabled the world to us!

I read whole documentations on some software on a Nokia 6630, and I made my way to here 15 years later.

Thank you for being part of an amazing software that changed many lives.

I was thinking similar at the mere mention of Opera Mini. I imagine a fair number of us reading remember how great that thing was for its time.

That's so fantastic to read - thank you - I actually never really connected with a former dedicated user like this before. I'm so happy :).

So weird, especially since the service peaked at 150 million average monthly active users.

I too really appreciated Opera Mini here in New Zealand. Thank you for your efforts!

> Thank you for being part of an amazing software that changed many lives.

Big +1 on this. Opera Mini was a revelation when it came out: The real web, on pretty much every phone in existence. Wikipedia at my fingertips.

It worked so well and was so resource efficient, I've continued using it even on smartphones until browsers, networks and devices finally caught up.

To me, Opera Mini is one of the most amazing pieces of technology, and hearing the name evokes immense nostalgia. Thank you.

I still use operamini.jar for reading hackernews, for me it gives even better ux than typical smartphone browser, because I want just text and nothing more. No popups, no suddenly videos, no proposals to install freaking apps, no cookie banners, no bothering about slow https handshake when gsm coverage is really elusive. Operamini saves old button phones from being just bricks.

Wow.

I love moments like this where two people meet and share information about a shared thread in their lives, when they would otherwise probably never know. Good job hacker news:)

Hey, much like the other comment said, Opera Mini made a lasting impact on me. 10 years ago, I was a teenager from Serbia living in a shitty high school dorm at the time with Internet being cut off at 11pm (with a pretty busy day before). My crappy Sony Ericsson with very limited data was all I had to spend nights learning and feeding my curiosity and passion for programming. Opera Mini was a game changer. I read source code, blogs, docs, wiki, posted in forums and chat rooms, even pirated some programming books using it.

Many years later I'm doing great and I honest to God think I wouldn't have gotten as far as I did if it weren't for your work.

Thank you.

And that was a cool story, would love to hear more :)

> The reason we abandoned this [war driving] idea: A combination of our inhouse lawyer's opinion

Can't stop thinking how every company doing mapping, like google, today includes wifi wardriving like it's nothing serious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardriving

Better inhouse lawyers? :-/

Better lawyers would advise you to keep your nose clean so you didn't need to devote as much budget to paying them.

That doesn't sound like lawyers to me.

Here in Russia was a time when Opera Mini mods were popular. There was even a WAP site where you could configure a mod and have the jar generated for you! I remember using one of these on a Siemens CX75. That mod had a very tiny custom font and the ability to download and somehow upload files. I stopped using the mods when an all-new version was released that could display desktop sites with a more-or-less correct layout, a "mouse" pointer and the ability to turn the display sideways. It was a godsend to use VKontakte especially — there was no mobile website back then because just the idea of using your phone to access the internet was rare and somewhat badass.

> I stopped using the mods when an all-new version was released that could display desktop sites with a more-or-less correct layout, a "mouse" pointer and the ability to turn the display sideways.

Late reply, but maybe you'll read it:

That was Opera Mini 4. In Opera Mini 1-3 the "layout" actually happened on the actual device, using the very slow java VM.

In Opera Mini 4 and later, the layout for non-mobile web sites was done on the server-side using some pre-defined screen width, like 700px or so. Or for for a mobile web site, using the exact width of the screen. The output is more similar to PDF than HTML. Like, write this text there, this image, there, paint this filled rect there etc.

This generation was the one that really got us hundreds of millions of MAUs.

Ha, this brings back memories indeed. I was working on the Skype J2ME app at the time and Opera was one of the few complex apps to look up to for a source of motivation and inspiration.

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