Opera Mini

So we have the first alternative web browser available in the App Store for iPhone and iPod touch. It’s fast, faster than Safari in most cases, but is it ‘better’?  I wouldn’t say so, but it has some noteworthy features that make it an app worth owning.

Opera Mini by Opera Software ASA is loaded with neat features, though it also lacks a few key features Safari provides so really it’s nice to have both browsers to choose from, hey it’s FREE so why not?  The main thing that stands out with Opera Mini is the speed. The developers claim, “Use our powerful servers to compress data by up to 90% before sending it to your iPhone, so page-loads are lightning fast“. So you get optimized performance for faster downloading times. In the tests I ran, this was definitely an obvious advantage over Safari. In addition to the fast load times Opera Mini also provides features like:

• Speed Dial gets you to your favorite Web sites with a single tap
• An address field with auto-completion means you type less
• Tabs allow for multitasking with several Web pages
• Bookmarks can be easily managed and accessed

The menu tool-set icon in the lower right corner has a convenient and simple-to-use interface that provides you with a number of functions on the fly like bookmarks, history, start page, saved pages, settings, find a page, and help. Also the settings page has even more detail oriented adjustments like Image Quality, Font Size, Mobile View, and Full Screen, making customization a breeze.

There’s no pinch and zoom functionality which was truly missed. Instead there’s Opera’s optimized tap-to-zoom, with just one level of zoom. This zooms in and centers the specific section that you want to view. Upon initial loading of a page, the font is really tough to read on most sites.  You’re either zoomed all the way out or all the way in, there is no “in-between” view that can be achieved.

It’s always a good thing to have multiple browsers to select from. Certain websites simply perform or just look better from one browser to another. I have “go-to” sites that I use for Safari, then others that work great on the Opera Mini. If it’s an image intensive site that takes a long time to load, I would recommend using the Opera Mini for it’s speedy access to the page. But I’d still say that I plan to do the majority of my browsing in Safari. Opera Mini has a lot of updates to do in order to get it up to par (let’s not forget it’s their first crack at it on iPhone); the page rendering isn’t anywhere near as attractive and organized for phone viewing, on occasion the text formatting is quite off. I was unable to play videos on the sites I visited while I did this review, (Safari had no trouble with the videos) and overall Opera Mini has a different feeling to it because it abandoned a lot of iPhones standard functionality like the pinch and zoom, plus the copy/paste text function is different, (more cumbersome). But don’t let these drawbacks sway you from trying out this app. It has plenty of unique features that make at a great addition to your browsing arsenal. It’s not a replacement to Safari, but instead a handy alternative that you’ll want to use for a different browsing experience on certain websites.

Posted by Steve
on Apr 15, 2010
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