Opera Mini – Review

Our rating:

By: Opera Software ASA

Version #: 5.0

Date Released: 2010-04-13

Developer: Opera Software ASA

Price: 0.00

User Rating:

Loading...

Download App

Opera is not really the first of third party browsers for the iPhone but its the first major name browser. Well, no matter how you spin it, Opera Mini is getting a lot of attention from all over the web. I guess the real question though is, is all the hype Opera Mini is getting worth it?

When you start the Application you are greeted with Speed Dial.  Opera, Safari, & Chrome for the Desktop users will be familiar with this feature, but for those that don’t know what it is, its six screenshots/photos of your favorite websites, and it provides you a quick tap to your favorite sites. You can customize Speed Dial however you like.

Standard mode its like browsing in any other mobile browser your familiar with. Address bar is top left; Search is top right; Back, Forward, & Refresh bottom left; Tabs and Settings bottom Right. Only Grip I have is there is a red bar along the top in standard mode, and it stays there all the time (even when you scroll down a page). It not unattractive other then the fact that it eats some screen real estate. I believe its so you can tap to get to the top, and so you know what site address you are at.

Opera also supports Tabbing, and the nice thing about Tabs is you are presented by images, and you can scrub through them. Don’t want a tab anymore? Just tap the red ( X ), to add another tab, click & hold on a link, you will be presented by an option to open that page in a new tab, the other way you can open a new tab is by clicking the ( + ) on the right of all the tabs.

Opera added contextual menus.  Accessing those means you need to tap and hold the screen. Similar to what you find when you right click on any regular computer.  Menus will change based on what you’ve tapped and held on the screen.

If you tap the wrench icon in the bottom right of the standard view, you are presented with seven options. They are Bookmarks, History, Start Page, Saved Pages, Settings, Find in Page, & Help.  I can see this wrench becoming an essential tap zone for active users of Opera Mini.

Want to add or goto a bookmark? Just tap the wrench, then select bookmarks. Don’t remember what site you found the cool App on?  Click history and there you see it.

This is also where you will find the settings for Opera.  There you can turn on mobile view, fullscreen browsing, and Opera Link.  The link offers a sync service that will sync all of your bookmarks, Speed Dial, and Search Engines between all your computers & Phones running Opera.

If you turn on Fullscreen browsing you get quite a bit of your screen real estate back. I really like this feature and for me, this is probably the best feature of the browser.  In this view, the browser gets out of your way and shows the web page full screen (except for a back button on the bottom left).  If you want to get back to the standard mode, you can click on an arrow on the bottom right which brings all the standard mode buttons back.

I think the hype is definitely worth it.  I’ve noticed a definite speed increase in page load times (probably due to the compression technology Opera is using with its servers).

My only gripe with Opera is that zooming in on text and pictures isn’t as smooth as they are in Mobile Safari.

Do I expect that to be improved with updates?  Definitely.  And at this price?  I would highly recommend you try it for yourself.