Appalachian Apocalypse A Gonzo Geek's Musings in the Mountains

Opera Mini for the iPhone

So after the Nazi's over at Apple (yes I love their products, doesn't mean I have to like them) pulled a huge dick move on us yesterday saying that iPhone apps have to be developed in ONLY their proprietary environment, they have decided to cut us a bit of slack.

I was worried this one wouldn't come to fruition....but the iPhone welcomes Opera Mini as the newest web browser for an awesome smart phone. Now Opera has been making a name for itself on all other mobile phone platforms for the last year or so and although I had not tested it myself, I was quite excited when I heard it was coming to my beloved iPhone. Why you may ask? Simple...Safari for the iPhone is sorely lacking. It's slow, it's clunky, not super user friendly and a little bit basic.

Anyone that knows me knows I like flash (not the app, but flashiness), shininess and slick design along with great performance in any of my gadgets or applications. I'm glad to say Opera Mini is giving me just that. Albeit this is my first day, nay first few hours using the product and I have certain qualms about it right off the bat, but I am going to give you a quick 1st impression rundown of what I think of it.

Pros:

• Tabbed browsing with a very slick 'show me what i have open' window.
• Speed Dial home page to hold all your favorite most visited sites.
• SUPER fast page loading using Opera Mini's compression technique that uses 90% less data transfer.
• The speed boost is REALLY noticeable when running in comparison to Safari on the regular EDGE network. It's blazing. And being in the hills of WV I actually use EDGE sometimes. I'm looking at you Clendenin. 3G and WIFI are also much faster as well.
• Hold click on a link to 'open in new tab'.

Cons:

• Not a huge fan of how it renders some of my favorite pages. Tries to use full view vs mobile view, and if I chose mobile view it renders different than in safari.
• Only one touch zoom in. It doesn't use the pinch/pull method that is native to the iPhone.
• On the note of native feeling, this app as of right now doesn't quite feel super native to me. I hope now that it is in the store Opera will continue to polish it directly for the iPhone.
• I cannot set it as my default browser so that links from other apps jump directly to Opera instead of Safari

So there it is, I have a pretty close Pro/Con race going on here. I like new; I like shiny; I like anything against the default. So I WANT to really like Opera. I'm going to give it a few weeks to a month as my main mobile web browser.

This is where I ask you Dear Reader, if you are an iPhone user to download Opera Mini from the itunes App Store and give it a shot. Comment back and let me know what you think.

Apple gave us this one as a freebie (the app is free by the way) and since they are locking down everything else and shackling us to the mindset of " we'll let you know what you like and can have", its nice to see a bit of freedom of choice in this wildly over saturated world of Apps.

Let me know what you think...