Opera Mini for the iPhone was released less than 24 hours ago and we were able to install it on one of our iPod touch’s. From a quick look, the browser is extremely fast, but needs a lot of work on the user interface and gesture controls. Keep reading for a full review.
Speed
Opera based Opera Mini off of speed, saying that the browser loads web pages 6 times faster than Apple’s Safari web browser. Server-side compression and loading allows the speeding times to improve dramatically, according to Opera.
In our own tests, Opera Mini loaded the It’s All Tech standard homepage (non-mobile) web page in 6 seconds. Safari took 14 seconds to load the It’s All Tech homepage in standard mode.
Loading mobile Google took 2.3 seconds on Opera Mini, but took 3 seconds on Safari.
The final speed test we ran was loading the desktop version of YouTube. Opera Mini took 5.65 seconds to load YouTube and Safari took 10.69 seconds to load the desktop version of YouTube.
However, we did notice that Opera Mini took longer to start up and to be usable, compared to Safari. This is most likely due to the fact that Opera Mini needs to connect to the server before loading any web pages.
Clearly Opera Mini for the iPhone beats out Safari in speed, but what about user interface?
Speed: 10/10 stars (10 being the best)
Stability
We loaded 10 websites at the same time (10 different tabs) in Opera Mini and the browser did not crash once. In fact, there was not even any slow down with 10 pages open. Opera certainly got the stability down with Opera Mini, and it appears nothing will crash this web browser, but we’ll keep trying.
Stability: 10/10 stars (10 being the best)
User Interface
The user interface of Opera Mini is where the web browser begins to fall apart. The interface looks very rough, like it was not completed and things were just thrown into places where they don’t even fit. Switching tabs is a pain, especially with multiple ones open, since you have to scroll through each one to find the one you are looking for. Accessing bookmarks is difficult because it is hidden under the Settings pane. The Google search box is very small and does not really need the Google logo in there.
It almost seems like the address box at the top was not finished because it justs cuts off at the top.
User Interface: 5/10 stars (10 being the best) – the user interface certainly needs a lot of work, but hopefully will improve with future releases.
Multi-touch gestures
Opera Mini for the iPhone includes all of the multi-touch gestures that Safari includes, except for pinch to zoom. However, the question is, does Opera do a good job implementing these features? A short answer would be “no.”
Opera Mini has, to say the least, horrible momentum scrolling, a feature everyone is accustom to in Safari. Momentum scrolling, the ability to choose how fast the page scrolls up or down using the power of your finger flick, was implemented horribly in Opera Mini. It works, but it works very basically. In our tests, it seems like it only recognizes up to a certain power of flick and after that, just goes as fast as it can.
There is a the ability to hold down anywhere on the web page and a small dialogue box opens up that allows the user to copy the text, open the link in a new tab or save an image.
Opera also needs to implement pinch to zoom into Opera Mini for the iPhone, however, most web pages seem to be zoomed in enough so that text can be read, something that Safari is not that good at.
Multi-touch gestures: 7/10 stars (10 being the best) – Opera needs to fix momentum scrolling and add pinch to zoom if they want this rating to increase.
Overall Thoughts
Opera built a solid and very speedy web browse with Opera Mini for the iPhone, but it is lacking in features such as multi-touch gestures and user interface elements. If Opera fixes these, Opera Mini will certainly become my main web browser on my iPod touch.
Overall Score: 33/40 (40 being the best)
