iPhone App Review: Opera Mini Web browser

In a move that surprised everyone, the Opera browser came to the iPhone today in the form of the Opera Mini. Available now from the iPhone App Store.

The browser loads fast, noticeably faster than Safari. The pages are loaded zoomed, out, and sites with mobile front pages load those.

A page created using Drupal with three columns, Opera tried to collapse into one column, something Safari doesn't do. It loaded the page correctly.  We went into settings and turned on full mode, it did not help.

To zoom in on a page you double tap, then tap to zoom out, you do not pinch (you can pinch but it's not a smooth, so you might as well double tap). It takes some getting used to and you will find yourself accidentally hitting links at first.

Opera Mini has the ability to save pages for offline use. We saved the NY Times page, then turned on airplane mode and reopened Opera. The NY Times page appeared just as it had when online, pictures and all.

The tabs are cool, very nice implementation. We were able to create up to 38. You can shuffle through the tabs by flicking your finger.

The mobile mode in settings creates mobile versions of full size pages, which was interesting.

When logging into a site a pop-up will ask if you want to remember the password.

Holding your finger down on an image gives you a context menu with options such as ‘Open in New Tab’, Open Image’, ‘Save Image’ and ‘Select Text’.

Holding your finger down on text gives you a context menu with the options ‚ÄòCopy‚Äô, ‚ÄòSearch, ‚ÄòSearch With…‚Äô.

Under settings there is a ‘Find in Page’ option; very handy.

There are also the standards bookmarks, and history pages, and the speed dial page, not dissimilar to Safari's 'Top Sites' or Google's opening page in Chrome.

Opera Mini is for the iPhone only right now, On the iPad it looks like every other Iphone app on the iPad, stuck in a window in the middle, or full size and excessively pixelated.

All in all this is a winner and sure to be the new default browser for a lot of iPhone users.

4 out of 5 stars

Opera Mini Web browser Free in the Itunes App Store

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