Opera Mini now available for iPhone, and it's free!

Sick of Safari? As of last week Apple agreed to include the Opera Mini mobile web browser in its App Store, giving iPhone users the opportunity to ditch Apple's very own Safari browser.

It may not sound like much, but the arrival of a competitor's browser is a minor revolution in the exclusive world of the Apple iPhone. In fact, users can now download a new web browser and are no longer restricted to Apple's previously imposed Safari. What's more, Opera Mini is completely free! The computer-based version of Opera has a proven track record, even if users tend to turn first of all to Firefox as an alternative to Safari or Internet Explorer. The mobile version promises faster loading and navigation speeds, as well as a user-friendly tab system.

We gave Opera Mini a quick go last week, and it's true that it certainly speeds up web browsing on the iPhone. The home page has a Speed Dial function (see picture, below left), which is a kind of icon-based bookmark system for quick and easy access to your favourite sites. You can also click on an icon to show all your tabs superimposed (see middle picture) so you can toggle between them easily.


In practice, though, there are still some problems, and the worst is probably seen when displaying entire web pages. The DigitalVersus website, for example, displays correctly, but it's way too small to read, whereas in Safari, you can generally read most of the words displayed without having to zoom in. Opera does have a zoom function that you activate by tapping twice on the section you want to enlarge. It works, but the zoom is so powerful that you end up with a tiny section of the page blown up five times larger, so it's basically all or nothing. In Safari, the zoom focuses on areas of text and frames them perfectly, whereas in Opera Mini, you then have to navigate within the zoomed image to find the part you're looking for.

However, I'm sure Opera will quickly correct some of these issues with updates. As it is though, Opera Mini is still faster than Safari and offers more advanced web navigation options. It'll be interesting to see whether Apple bites back.

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