Apple has traditionally been reluctant to approve of third party apps that duplicate built-in functions on the iPhone, and thus Safari has been the only web browser on the iPhone. There are third party web browsers in the App Store, and many apps include a built-in web browsing function, but all of those apps have used Apple’s WebKit, the same engine that powers Safari.
Late last night, that changed when Apple approved the Opera Mini web browser and added it to the App Store. Just the fact that this app was approved in the first place is a significant event. As noted in the New York Times back in 2008, Opera had started working on a web browser for the iPhone soon after Apple allowed third parties to write apps, but the company stopped development once it became clear that Apple would not approve an alternative to its own Safari browser. But for whatever reason, Opera went ahead and wrote the app anyway and submitted it to Apple last month, Apple surprised everyone by approving the app yesterday, and now we have the free Opera Mini on the iPhone as an alternative to Safari.
The main advantage of Opera Mini is speed when you are connecting via Edge or 3G. Unlike the Safari app which presents you with the “full internet” on the iPhone, when you request a web site in Opera Mini the request goes to the Opera server, which gets the page, compresses it up to 90%, reformats it for a mobile phone screen, and then sends it to the iPhone. Because much less data is sent to the iPhone, pages display faster.
The difference is most notable if you are on an Edge connection, where Opera displays a website much faster than Safari; Opera claims up to six times faster. On 3G, Opera still feels faster but the effect is not quite as dramatic, and on Wi-Fi there is virtually no speed advantage. For example, Greg Kumparak of Mobile Crunch ran a speed test and found that on 3G, sites loaded two or three times as fast as Safari, but on Wi-Fi, sites loaded just about as fast on both Opera Mini and Safari although Opera Mini had a very slight advantage. In addition to the speed advantage there is also a data advantage; if you are not on an unlimited data plan (for example you are traveling internationally), you will appreciate using less data to view the same website.
Unfortunatley, you pay a price for the speed and reduced data. Pages frequently look worse in Opera than they do in Safari, with text not wrapping around graphics the right way or graphics not being sized correctly. Websites are still completely functional, just sometimes not as pretty and less legible when you are viewing the entire page. Here are two examples with Opera on the left and Safari on the right:
Although it is difficult to read a webpage in Safari in full page view, you can still double tap on a column of text (just like in Safari) to zoom and read that text.
In addition to the speed advantage on Edge and 3G, Opera has some other unique advantages. First, the default blank page in Opera can hold shortcuts up to nine of your favorite sites. Hold down on one of the icons and a pop-up menu will appear letting you change the shortcut.
Second, the app has an interesting method of using multiple tabs so that you can have different websites open at the same time. Tap on the tabs button and a strip will pop up with overlapping square icons that you can tap to jump to a page. Unlike Safari, which limits you to 9 tabs, you can open many more tabs in Opera Mini. (If there is a limit, I haven’t figured it out yet.) And switching between tabs in Opera Mini seems to be faster than doing so in Safari. If you like tabbed browsing on an iPhone, I suspect that you’ll be a fan of Opera Mini.
Third, the app has some very useful tools that you access by tapping the wrench icon. Three that I particularly like are (1) the ability to save a webpage so that you can instantly load it again later and (2) a useful Find in Page feature that gives you the ability to search for text within a webpage, with the terms highlighted and a Next button that lets you quickly find each instance of the word.
You can pinch to zoom in Opera, but unlike Safari where you can zoom to any level, in Opera you only have two zoom levels — the entire webpage, or zoomed in on the text. You can select text, but the implementation is more cumbersome than in Safari; you have to hold down your finger, then choose select text from a pop-up menu, then drag to select the text. And sometimes, the app doesn’t correctly register that you are trying to select text. On the plus side, Opera does give you a fast option to run a Google search based on selected text. When you scroll down a webpage, you will see that pictures further down are not fully loaded although they do load as you scroll.
The Settings screen gives you several options to make Opera even more efficient. For example, you can adjust the image quality to make pictures load even faster (or turn off loading images completely). If you use Opera on your desktop computer, you can also use Opera link to sync between the two (although I didn’t test that option).
Opera is new to the iPhone, but Opera Mini has been around on other smartphones for a while. Indeed, the debut version of Opera Mini for iPhone is version 5.0. While Opera Mini has been around the block and thus you would expect a solid app on the iPhone, I still consider Safari on the iPhone a much more polished browser overall. Nevertheless, I encourage you to download Opera Mini, especially considering that it is free. If you ever find yourself on a slow Edge connection, web browsing can be much faster on Opera Mini than on Safari. If you ever want to save a bunch of webpages to view later (perhaps when you don’t have a web connection), Opera Mini lets you do that. And the Find in Page feature is great, and I am sure that I will use Opera Mini at times in the future just for this feature — at least, until Apple adds it to Safari, which I hope that they do soon. (Yes, I know that there are currently javascripts that you can use in Safari to find text in webpages, but they always feel like hacks to me.) It is significant that Apple approved Opera Mini at all, and because of the unique features of Opera Mini, I am sure that lots of people will download it for occasional use at those times when the unique advantages of Opera make it a better choice than Safari.
Click here to get Opera Mini (free): 
One more tradeoff that you make in return for that speed is the loss of end-to-end encryption: http://www.opera.com/mobile/help/faq/#connection — I wouldn’t use it to authenticate any account I care about.