Opera’s New Browser 'Ice' for iOS, Android Slated for February Release
Opera’s New Browser 'Ice' for iOS, Android Slated for February ReleasePocket-lint

Opera Software is reportedly prepping a new browser called 'Ice' for smartphones and tablets.

According to technology website Pocket-lint, the browser company will launch Ice in February. The website also posted a video of Opera's internal meeting in which the company demonstrated the new browser on an iPad.

"This is a full touch and tablet-focused browser," said Opera CEO Lars Boilesen in the video. "Most are taking a PC browser and squishing [it] into a tablet, or they are taking a mobile browser and blowing it up to fill the space."

Unlike the previous browsers from Opera the upcoming Ice browser will be based on the WebKit rendering engine which is used in Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari browsers.

"Opera mini is great, but it is not a fully-fledged offering like Chrome or Safari. There are too many sites it doesn't work with," said Boilesen.

However, the company will not throw out the current Opera Mini browser. Boilesen was also recorded saying that a desktop browser is also in the pipeline and would be unveiled in March.

"Mini is super important," Boilsen said adding, "It needs to be a platform where we create users and then migrate those users to over to our smartphone products."

The notable feature of the upcoming Ice browser is the gesture. The browser seemed to have got rid of the buttons for operations like navigating back and forth.

"It will ditch all buttons and instead use gestures to control key elements like forwards and backwards," Pocket-Lint reported.