Opera teased iPhone users with 5x times faster browser on EDGE. Of course, Opera Mini for iPhone is fast, but not as good as on WiFi, 3G.
I ran some tests to confirm if it was pratically faster for me. I tried it both on iPhone 2g, iPhone 3GS.
With Wi-Fi on (4mbps DSL) Mobile Safari out-performed Opera Mini. However, on EDGE, Opera Mini was way faster, difference of 3x was not hard to observe. But how many users are on EDGE, anyway?
Apart from that Javascript and HTML5 seems to do well, they look bit faster.
Navigation & Rendering
The original demo video from Opera showcased some great multitouch support. But when I used it, I was less than impressed. Double-tap zooming doesn’t work as great as mobile WebKit. It often zooms in too far, every line is tripped of on the right.
Fonts are no exception, even the common fonts render badly, they are readable, but not as good as Mobile Safari. It seems to use Helvetica no matter what is used in the webpage. I might be wrong, but I personally like Verdana, it’s smoother and more good on eyes.
The full page layout is decent but still not as good as Safari. I liked the buttons and interface controls, they hide well to give you more viewable area.
On Opera Mini, scrolling is not hueristic hence, glitchy, could be because Apple has patented Hueristic scrolling.
Verdict
Rating: 2.5/5 – The hopes were high but the app may not live upto the hype. Definitely its a great app fro EDGE users. I won’t recommend using it as your primary browser.
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“more good”? You mean “better”?
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Features not mentioned in the review:
+ Tabbed browsing (w/ multiple tabs loading in background)
+ Saved Pages (“When you find a page that you would like to keep, use Opera’s Save Page feature, and you can access it any time, without having to wait for it to download – even with no Internet connection.”)
+ “Find in this page”
+ Speed Dial
+ Browser cache (no page reloads after pressing the “back” or “forward” buttons)
+ Opera Link (bookmarks synchronization between iPhones, iPods, desktop computers (Opera Browser) and other mobile devices (Opera Mobile and Opera Mini))
You should also note, that it not only speeds up browsing on the EDGE networks, it also REDUCES THE REQUIRED DATA TRANSFER up to 20x comparing to Safari or any other browser.
It's not a “WebKit killer”, it just complements Safari on EDGE & limited 3G plans.
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It's good and nice.
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