Opera Mini on the iPhone

So Apple finally allowed Opera’s browser into the store. That’s the good news. The bad news, however, is that it’s not a full replacement for Safari. Sure, it’s fast – very fast. But it also has quite a few small issues that – once compounded – make Opera let less useful than it could’ve been.

First of all, the text rendering for regular, non-mobile optimized sites is horrible. You can’t read a single word until you zoom in. The problem, of course, is that you never really know what you are zooming in to…

Then, I’m also used to tapping the top of the screen to go back to the top of that page. That doesn’t work in Opera for the iPhone. Instead, you have to hit a button on the lower toolbar, which just isn’t very intuitive.

Another issues is that all your request are routed through Opera’s servers in order to get compressed. Sometimes, though, I would click on a link and nothing happened. Maybe Opera’s infrastructure is taking hit from the sudden rush of demand from new iPhone users, so I hope that this problem will soon disappear.

Two features that are great are the speed dial and the tabs manager. Very easy to use. These would make a great addition to any browser’s feature set.

Overall, I’m not sure Opera will replace Safari on my iPhone anytime soon. I will definitely keep it around and see how it develops, but for now, Safari still feels more like a full-blown browser and Opera – while faster – feels more like a pared-down mobile browser.