Opera Mini for iPhone & iPod Touch – Approved

As promised in an earlier blog post, I said I would give a review of the Opera Mini browser for iPhone and iPod Touch if and when it became available. I am still planning on doing that after I have given it a thorough shakedown but the good news is that Apple seems to be feeling generous today given their approval of the competing web browser for distribution through the App Store.

I thought I would share my first impressions at any rate.

Opera Mini does seem quicker than Safari on the iPhone although this is purely subjective and I have no benchmarks as supporting evidence. The perceived speed increase may be as a result of Opera’s proxy servers compressing images before being sent to the phone as well as Opera’s faster rendering engine.

I have found the zooming mechanism a bit weird at least in my preliminary usage. Pinch to zoom doesn’t work as it does in Safari but instead zooms right in on the particular area where you pinched. This may put off people wanting to precisely adjust their viewing experience. Also, moving from portrait to landscape orientations doesn’t properly redistribute the page properly for some websites leaving a white band down the right hand side unless you refresh the page.

Opera Mini does come with a raft of search options, including Google, Amazon, eBay and Wikipedia. One welcome feature notably absent from Safari on the iPhone is the ability to search for text on a website. There’s also a great “speed dial” start page when you open the browser or a new tab to quickly get to your favourite or commonly used websites.

At any rate, I think Opera Mini is a mixed bag but will give it a chance to grow on me. It’s free in the App Store so you don’t have anything to lose if you download it and play around with it.

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  1. […] was enough time to give a proper review of the application. I provided my first impressions in an earlier blog post but will elaborate on my findings. Opera Mini (Speed Dial […]

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