Nvidia and Opera duet on mobile web browsing

NVIDIA TODAY announced it was teaming up with Opera to bring a comprehensive desktop-style web browsing experience direct to MIDs and mobile phones by embedding Opera's browser into its Tegra family.

In a joint press release, the companies claimed the “full desktop browsing experience” would support JavaScript, vector graphics and, of course, video content.

Nvidia boasts it will provide “an optimised Opera 9.5 browser” in the company’s suite of pre-integrated software applications, along with its Tegra line of computer-on-chip Windows Mobile and Windows CE products.

The Tegra feature will purportedly hold up the promised full desktop web content with hardware acceleration of rich media, image and in-page video playback.

There will also apparently be GPU acceleration, which Nvidia reckons will provide more interactivity, panning and zooming whilst dramatically reducing the device’s battery consumption (suckage?).

Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera Software noted that “end users are demanding a mobile-browsing experience that mirrors that of their home and work computers”.

The collaboration will “create a powerful browsing experience that will truly make the Internet an integral part of the advanced Tegra mobile visual computing experience”, added Neil Trevett, vice president of mobile content at Nvidia.

The first devices using the Opera browser powered by Tegra should be out by sometime in 2009. Music to our ears. µ