[General Questions and Answers] mr_deimos:
You also forgot about one VERY important thing - both Opera Mini and Skyfire use server-side processing: the phone sends all information to opera's or skyfire's server, the server downloads the page as a normal browser would, then strips it of unnecessary data, resizes pictures, compresses the page and then sends it to your device.

So everything you browse, and all the data you send, including passwords is not exchanged directly with the target website, but instead goes trough a third party server. Of course all server-device communications are encrypted, but still i don't encourage using these browsers for sensitive data like banking or shopping using your credit card information. This might be a bit paranoid, but considering how internet looks like today, paranoia is a rather healthy thing ;)

Besides, there were already cases where browser used incorrectly made all the encryption useless: when opera (and probably skyfire too) is started for the first time, it generates a random key to encrypt data and identify your device. But when opera is cooked into ROM or made into CAB installer after this key has been generated, the server recognizes every device using this version as the same one. So if person A logs into a email account and then person B (using the same broken opera install with the same key) goes to this email website - he'll see he's already logged in as person A and can see all of his/her e-mails.

Of course this doesn't happen often (actually i know of only one such accident and the faulty opera was quickly removed from ROM) but still - better safe than sorry.

However, the advantage of these browsers is that they're really fast - all the hard work is done on the server so our devices don't need to do any html/css/javascript/etc interpreting and only have to draw the simplified version of website (opera mini) or something like a screenshot of the website (skyfire) sent by the server. And since the data sent to the device is compressed, they both use much less bandwidth than conventional browsers which is important on cellular connections where you usually pay for transmitted data quantity.

On the other hand, Opera Mobile (all versions), NetFront, Pocket Internet Explorer (which really sucks) are _real_ browsers, like the one on your PC - they communicate with websites directly. But they also have to do all the processing and interpreting, not only drawing so they're noticeably slower than Opera Mini and Skyfire. Also, they usually download all website content and transferred data is uncompressed so they use up much more bandwidth.

Generally, i prefer to use Opera Mini for general web browsing, forums, etc. But for sensitive data (shopping, banking, e-mail), or when bandwidth is not a concern (on a wifi connection) i tend to stick with Opera Mobile or NetFront.

Of these two browsers, Opera 9.5 gives a bit nicer and more finger-friendly user interface. But this requires quite a lot of memory and processing power to work smoothly, so it's almost unusable on low memory devices like Wizard.

NetFront has much simpler UI, closer to one seen in pocketIE and while it doesn't look as impressive an Opera's, it works much better on slower and low memory phones. Since they're both in open beta testing stage, it's best to download and try both to see which one you like more.