Opera Mobile 10 has made it to the Maemo platform, with Opera releasing the first preview releases for the Nokia N900 and N800/N810 devices.

The release marks the return of the Opera browser to the Maemo platform, which hasn’t been supported since Nokia included it’s own internal browser with devices back in 2008.

“The preview build contains the same features available in Opera Mobile 10 for Symbian and Windows Mobile smartphones. These include fast and economical browsing with Opera Turbo, bookmark and Speed Dial sync with other Opera products, and of course multiple tabs” wrote Opera’s Fredrik Öhrn.

A full list of features can be read in the Opera Mobile 10 features list, while a download can be found by browsing to this URL on your Maemo device.

More releases of the browser are expected during the coming months before we see a final release.

Along with the usual list of reasons including faster browsing speeds, Spilling goes on benchmark the browser against Safari on several popular sites with the phone in 2G (EDGE), 3G, and WiFi modes.

The difference was huge, with one example Facebook taking 8.8 seconds to load in Opera Mini in 2G mode, compared to 68.2 seconds in Safari. The difference was far less in 3G and WiFi modes, but Opera Mini still came out on top on all occasions.

The faster speed of Opera Mini on iPhone is attributed to Opera’s Turbo  technology, which pushes all data through Opera’s servers and compresses it before sending the webpage to a browsers iPhone.

Full benchmarks can be seen in Spillings article, while Opera Mini for iPhone can be downloaded for free from Apple’s App store.

Mozilla have released a pre-alpha build of it’s popular Firefox browser for Android devices. The browser, previously known under the Fennec codename, has been released to gather feedback from the Android community.

This news comes just a month after Mozilla announced it was putting Windows Mobile development on hold, and shows there is still life in the mobile version of Firefox outside of Windows Mobile and Nokia Maemo devices.

So far, the browser is only confirmed to be working on the Motorola Droid and Google Nexus One at this early stage of development.

Vladimir Vukićević has stated that this early build has poor memory management, and this build requires Android 2.0 or above, and likely an OpenGL ES 2.0 capable device. This is on top of a few other smaller issues.

Firefox for Android can be downloaded from http://bit.ly/fennec-android.

This figure includes 50 million users on Windows, Mac and Linux, plus another 50 million users browsing the web with Opera Mini on their mobile devices.

100 million users comes after a staggering 30% jump in desktop users from the same time last year, mostly attributed to the release of Opera 10.x browsers.

“Our focus on speed, security, innovation and usability continues to yield results. We always listen to the needs and wants of our users, and they reward us by choosing Opera,” said Jon von Tetzchner, Co-founder, Opera Software.

Congratulations to Opera on the achievement, and new users can download Opera for their computer or mobile device from the Opera website.

To celebrate the occasion, Opera has launched a timer to count how long it takes Apple to make a decision on the mobile browser.

It is still unknown however if Apple will accept the browser, despite Opera stating that the browser complies 100% with Apple’s App store policies. Apple has been known in the past to reject application that provide the same functionality as already found on the iPhone. Apple has however recently approved several web browser to the App store.

Opera announced the availability of Opera Mini for iPhone at the 2010 Mobile World Congress, which includes the use of  unlimited tabs, and the ability to search through web pages. The browser is missing pinch-to-zoom at this stage, but it is expected to be added in a future release if the browser is approved.

Time is now ticking Apple. Your move!

Both mobile browser have been in development since at least October last year, and include many improvements over their predecessors.

The browser both include new tabbed browsing, a streamlined user interface, new faster JavaScript and HTML rendering engines.

Perhaps the best inclusion is Opera Turbo, which can compress data by as much as 90%, and save mobile browsers time and money.

A full list of features plus download links can be found on the Opera Mobile website.

WebKit is the popular rendering engine found powering Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome browsers.

A demonstration of an early build on a BlackBerry devices showed real promise, with fast rendering speeds and scoring a perfect 100/100 in the Acid3 test.

No news of when to expect the new browser, but we will let you know when we have more information.

A video demonstration of the browser in action can be seen after the break.

Firefox Mobile is almost a direct port of it’s big brother Firefox, with a completely redesigned user interface for touch screens.

The browser includes the awesome bar, a download manager, early HTML5 support, tabbed browsing, add on support, safe browsing, and is currently available in over 30 languages.

Firefox Mobile can be downloaded and installed on the Nokia N900, with more Maemo devices expected on the market soon.

“We’ve made big improvements to kinetic panning and added the ability to scroll iframes. A lot of work has been done to make our theme more robust, taking advantage of things like media queries to support various devices, orientations, and platforms which you’ll see more of in the next Windows Mobile release. Overall, this beta is a major improvement to previous Fennec betas” said Stuart Parmenter, Mozilla’s director of mobile engineering.

Full details of all changes, plus download links can be found in the release notes.

The biggest new feature is Opera Turbo, which can compress data by up to 80% before it is sent to the mobile device, dramatically increasing web page loading times.

A full list of new features can be found in the new features list, while the browser can be downloaded from the Opera Mobile website.