It's time that Opera Mobile got its due. Long overshadowed by Opera Mini--the light, server-fed browser for Java phones--Opera Mobile is a robust browser built on Web standards (and written with C and C++) that's known for delivering a full Web experience to Windows Mobile and Symbian phones.

Yet even though Opera Mobile has made good as a much closer approximation of the desktop Internet experience, it traditionally hasn't received the same developmental attention as Opera Mini. With Opera Mobile 9.5 beta, released on Thursday, things begin to change.

In many ways, this beta version of Opera Mobile is a fusion of Opera's Desktop and Mini versions. It inherits certain tabbing, searching, linking, and saving capabilities from Opera Desktop 9.5, and Opera Mini's view settings.

What follows is a full hands-on review of Opera Mobile 9.5 beta (also see the video) that takes into account the program's newly redesigned interface, features, performance enhancements, Opera Dragonfly, issues, and what to expect from future beta builds, of which there will be several before the final release. We also won't leave out availability and price.