Opera Mini on iPhone review

In addition to this, you can also save web pages for “Offline” viewing, which is a remarkably useful feature as important websites can be saved for later viewing within Opera and accessed when you’re in a dead zone – such as on the tube or in the countryside. Granted, it’s not a massive feature, but it’s one that stood out to us, nonetheless, as very useful addition to the iPhone’s browsing capabilities.

Unfortunately, Opera Mini isn’t perfect. Yes, it does have the speed to beat Safari on 2G and 3G, but it can’t match Apple’s patented WebKit for finesse – and while this is certainly unfortunate, it’s to be expected, as it’ll be a cold day in hell before Apple is beaten on quality in this area.

In terms of the overall user experience, the big difference between Safari and Opera is that Safari’s scrolling is heuristic and infinitely superior to Opera’s rather erratic pinch-and-zoom function, which isn’t a patch on Safari’s.

Thank goodness, then, for the tap-to-zoom function in Opera Mini. Granted, it’s still not perfect, but once you’ve tried your hand at its pinch-and-zoom, you’ll thank your lucky stars it’s there.

In addition to this, Opera Mini also lacks the seamless movement that is practically a trademark of Safari. For instance, when you swipe across a web page, it doesn’t move smoothly like Safari does, there’s noticeable lag and the details of the web page blur.

Overall, Opera Mini does have the edge over Safari in terms of speed on low-end connections and this is an infinitely useful feature to have, especially if you travel a lot with work, as you’ll be able to browse web pages relatively fast on the lowest of connections.

However, at the end of the day, Opera Mini simply can’t compete with Safari’s browsing experience – it lags, the pinch-and-zoom function isn’t good, and after a while of using Opera, you’ll really start to miss the finesse of Safari.

That said, Opera Mini is a welcome addition to the iPhone. It comes with more than enough cool features and quirks to become an essential part of your daily kit and is practically essential when you’re in areas with limited network connectivity.

The best aspect of having Opera Mini on your iPhone, however, is this: if you’re in an area with little network connectivity, you can boot up Opera and browse as if you were on full 3G. Alternatively, if you’re in a high-end network zone, you can sit back and enjoy the finesse of Safari.

Basically, it’s good to have a choice, as both browsers do things the other can’t – and in a busy professional life, this is what really counts.