Ben Michael Ward is a Web Developer in San Francisco.

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Onspeed Mobile. What is this?

Oh, interesti…waaaaitaminute…
Originally uploaded by Ben Ward
Saw this advert in on-train magazine while travelling back to Manchester. It’s an ad for a mobile web browser. Nice idea, maybe it’s a bit like the excellent Opera Mini. Then you look a little closer…

The most critical piece of text reads:

“And now you can try ONSPEED Mobile for FREE for 14 days — no obligation, no credit card required. It takes 2 minutes to install from a text message. After the free trial, you can buy ONSPEED Mobile for just £19.99 a YEAR - with no contract at all.”

Then you look more closely at the screenshot and wonder, doesn’t that look rather a lot exactly like the same as Opera Mini? Which is free?

Please. What on earth is going on?


Can anyone shed any light on why Onspeed Mobile are reselling Opera Mini? An application which is, err, free.

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3 Responses to “Onspeed Mobile. What is this?”

  1. Comment by Stuart

    June 7th, 2006 at 12:50 pm

    check out the comments on this post: http://my.opera.com/eskils/blog/show.dml/210482

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  2. Comment by Tim

    June 25th, 2006 at 12:11 am

    Opera Mini isn’t free… Opera the browser for desktops (linux and windows) IS free, but the mini version remains on a trial-evaluation period, after which time the user is required to register and pay for the browser.

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  3. Comment by Tim

    June 25th, 2006 at 12:17 am

    Ok, change of note.. Opera MOBILE isn’t free, Opera MINI is. Heres a snippet from the website:

    Do I have to pay for Opera Mini?
    No, Opera Mini is free. Depending on how you get Opera Mini, your provider may charge you for the actual download.
    When surfing with Opera Mini, Web pages are optimized and compressed before being sent to your phone. This means that even though your mobile provider may charge you for the data which is transferred to your phone, the amount of data transferred is significantly less than it would normally be, making mobile surfing cheaper.

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