MSFT Uses Opera Browser!!

Here’s a fun game. Mentally rewind 5 years and see how likely the following sentence would have been: Microsoft has decided to make Opera the default browser on its new, Linux-based Android handsets.

Yes, it seems the Nokia X series is a serious project after all, and Microsoft is expanding the line to include a new €99 ($135) Nokia X2 handset with more midrange specifications than the original low-end Nokia X – 4.3-inch screen, 1GB of RAM and a 5-megapixel camera. The new Android handset includes a bunch of Microsoft services like Outlook, Skype and OneDrive, but of course there’s no Internet Explorer for Android.

Hence the inclusion of Opera as the default browser on the X2, a decision that makes perfect sense as the X series is mostly destined for emerging markets and Opera’s data-compressing, money-saving Turbo feature is designed for the same.

Opera will also be the default browser on other X-series handsets rolling off the production line from now on. It was already available on the first-generation Nokia X but not as the default – that was the Nokia Xpress browser, which also compresses data but which is no longer part of or available for Nokia X Software Platform 2.0, the new iteration of Nokia’s Android fork.