Opera Mini for iPhone to be revealed next week, available never
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Feb 10th 2010 4:00AM
posted Feb 10th 2010 4:00AM
Here's a guaranteed way to drum up support for an upcoming press event: claim the impossible. Opera just announced a press and partner preview of its Opera Mini browser for the iPhone at Mobile World Congress. You read that right -- for the iPhone. Of course, the real intent of this stunt is to draw our incredulous attention to Opera's Mobile and Mini browsers running on platforms where the software is actually released like Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Android. Besides, as good as the Mini browser is, it, like Mobile Safari, doesn't support Flash. And since Apple isn't likely to approve any browser that duplicates functionality it already provides, really, what's the point of all this? A Cydia store release?
Please opera.. release via Cydia...
@geekthree
The best thing is that if they did, it'd probably wouldn't be anywhere near as good as safari.
@BUNT2 Opera for iPad coming soon too ae? Thought I should throw it in there..
@BUNT2
Shame on you boy. Tell me where Safari mobile is better than Opera? Don't make this fan boy talk it's really bad for you and the company that you are supporting.
@geekthree
Please Apple, see the light! You can't keep your garden locked forever. The iPhone has grown to be a huge platform used by millions of people so you can't claim its only yours anymore. Even with an open environment I'm sure you can keep the iPhone safe enough just as you did with Mac OS X (and even if not, come on, 90% of the users prefer to us Windows...).
Allow 3rd party installations on the iPhone and it'll have a lot more than 140,000 apps.
@jfrschnell
Safari on iPhone is far smoother than any other mobile web browsing experience. I fail to see how Opera could do better (unless they added private browsing)
@BUNT2
While I agree that mobile Safari on the iPhone is pretty good, I wouldn't say other browsers don't have a chance.
See here for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmDmH8lEQJE (although it didn't test them thoroughly)
And you have to take two things into account:
1. it's not the latest version of Opera, so we can expect some improvements
2. it didn't use compression, which would make web pages load faster (and cheaper, for those that don't have unlimited internet)
@BUNT2
Two words
Firefox Mobile - AKA Fennec
Best mobile web browser I've ever faced.
That includes Safari Mobile, Android's mini Chrome, Opera Mini, IE Mobile
@Drybones5
Did ever use the latest build on the N900? It might have potential but right now it is no competition to mobile safari, the N900 microB nor the android chrome and opera mobile 9.7 - it lacks useful gestures and its performance hickups ar annoying in everyday use.
@Drybones5 Hmm... I think Opera mobile is better =\
@chschubert Wah! The N900 browser destroys mobile safari, the performance hiccups your talking about are it rendering everything on the page safari seems smoother because it is skipping over content it can't render.
@yomachaser Regardless of whether Safari is smoother because it's skipping elements or not, it still results in a smoother end user experience.
@yyy
I'm pretty sure they still consider all of the iPhone users their customers.
@geekthree
wake me up when mozilla gets there browser on the iphone. They have some really nifty stuff for there mobile browser.
@BUNT2
See how other people comment on comparisons by having used other programs and experimented - while you just spout fanboy opinions with no support.
That's why none of us are fooled into placing value on anything you say. Its just baseless blind support for anything Apple has or will do. Sad.
@BUNT2 Yep
@yyy Dude, you sound like some whinny little kid. Just buy another phone if you're not happy with the iPhone, no big deal.
Opera Mini or Mobile? The latter is coded specifically for each platform while Mini runs in a JVM. AFAIK, the iPhone doesn't have one.
@Herr Synnberg
I was just going to point that out, this must surely be Opera Mobile.
I'm using it on my Samsung i8910 and it's an incredible browser, far better than the built-in one. I only wish it supported Flash.
@Herr Synnberg : Definitely Mini. It's a bit of a mystery, JVM-wise.
@sockatume Perhaps they ported a KVM to the iPhone. Even the PSP has one.
@Herr Synnberg Don't all ARM cpus (with Jazelle tech) have a hardware JVM?
@Herr Synnberg Opera mini would be nice for casual browsing. It should save on battery usage since there is less cpu power required for rendering full sites, and less power used for quickly downloading compressed versions of a website...also faster performance if you are on EDGE....
@Herr Synnberg I should also note that if you look at Opera Mobile 10 Beta, it uses an optional "Turbo Mode" that employs similar compression methods that Opera Mini uses. We shouldn't be so stuck on the fact that Mini was a java app because that was a widely supported platform amongst devices.
Will it blend?
@tonyunreal YES WE CAN!
I'm a mac, and having no choice in browsers was my idea.
@mullingit0ver You're right. I so with the Mac had IE :P
Remember when IE was the default browser included with Macs? That was weird.
@Chefgon
Yeah mainly because it was worse than the PC version of IE6
@mullingit0ver I'm a Mac, and to turn Apple over I use Firefox.
@mullingit0ver I was surprised but the app store has other browser options, a simple search for web browser returned: PERFECT Browser 3, Full Browser, Oceanus Web Browser, Multi-Full Web Browser, Mercury Web Browser, VanillaSurf, Full Screen Web Browser...to name a couple of more than 50. I now use Mercury Web Browser, which acts very much like mobile firefox.
@RLBurkes Mercury is pretty sweet. I can't stand how much real estate the stupid toolbars in Safari take up.
@RLBurkes
I too use Mercury browser and was surprised to see browsers in the app store. Apparently as long as you use the same foundation as Safari (webkit) then you're allowed into the App Store
OPERA is the best browser on Earth.
@budoraga I'd disagree with that.
@(Unverified)
Don't be too quick to dismiss the 10.5 version. It's still in pre-alpha and already faster than chrome 5. Of course we're talking desktop versions here, but still don't be too quick to discard it.
@budoraga Opera for PC has gone down the shit hole..It was awesome on the beginning...
@budoraga I have to agree with that. I've been using Opera for a long time and I think it is better than the other alternatives (not by far though, nowadays there really isn't a huge difference between them).
- Opera supports the most web standards by far.
- Opera 10.5 (the new beta) for me at least on peacekeeper is much faster than any other browser (including Chrome).
- It uses a lot less memory than Chrome and Firefox.
- The new skin for 10.5 so far is really great - and it does support skinning (and there are a lot of decent ones to choose from). Although to be fair all the browsers look pretty good or have skinning capabilities so I'm not going to count this one.
- Opera uses your cache for to go back/forward in your page history which is much much faster than other browsers (try it - its pretty much instant).
- Opera has a ton of features, I'm not gonna go through them indvidually but it has almost all the features I would want in a browser (the features it doesn't have I think are pretty insignificant). I know with extensions you can add basically all these features to Firefox or now Chrome with the new beta but from my experience after trying this the user made extensions are just never quite as good. It always give a far less polished experience.
I only mentioned a few things here that I find make the biggest difference for me but there a whole bunch of other features to take into account. What I would say is wait for 10.5 to be officially released (not too far off now) then try it for a week or so - you'd be surprised at what it can do.
@tomer Totally agreed. I absolutely love Opera. Their recent adhering to normal browser keyboard shortcuts (Alt-D for address bar, Ctrl-E for search, etc) really pushes it over the edge. And it's always been fast and rediculously capable...
I hope the EU see's this.
It's just like the IE case, except worse there is NO possibility to change.
@Erb except that it's NOT like IE case in which IE is market share leader which makes it monopoly in this case "O mini" is already market leader so theres nothing they can do...
@max1c
So Safari doesn't have a monopoly on the iphone? IE was only deemed to have a monopoly on windows based machines, not all computers in general, seems similar to me.
@psc2 yes it does but since it is not market share leader they simply cant sue them
@psc2
"IE was only deemed to have a monopoly on windows based machines, not all computers in general"
IE has a monopoly on computers in general since computers in general are Windows! The other OSs don't come even close in marketshare.
@Erb When iPhone-OS is the dominant mobile system, then you can drag Apple to court over abusing a monopoly. As has already been done with iTunes songs being only playable on iPods earlier.
@Sarig
So the day microsoft hits 49% (If that day were to ever happen) they could force IE down our throats and get away with it?
Abusing a monopoly is abusing a monopoly, with or without marketshare.
@Sarig
I say why wait, drag them now.
@Erb If Windows hit 49% then it's not a monopoly. It's quite impossible to abuse a monopoly if you don't have one.
@chaos215bar2
The monopoly we're talking about has nothing to do with marketshare.
It's the monopoly they have on software (More specifically web browsers) within their respective platforms. (Windows/OSX/iPhone OS)