Yesterday, April 12th, Opera’s browser for the iPhone was finally released after a 20 day wait from the iPhone community. The browser has been much anticipated, with people questioning how flexible the App Store is with applications like Opera, a competitive browser to the iPhone’s native Safari.
Kelly and I have been testing it out over the past couple days, and we’re giving our full review here.
User interface
The responsive UI is one of the biggest things that have been hyped about Opera for iPhone, and it doesn’t disappoint. Nearly everything loads in an instant, and the UI is a very nice one to use. Things are eye pleasing and the browser UI is really a pleasure to use.
Browsing
Clearly the most important part of a browser – it’s ability to browse the web with speed and ease of navigation. Opera truly delivers on the first one – pages load and render very quickly. However, Opera needs to work on making navigation simple, and easy. The lack of multitouch on this screen, and the slow response to finger movements made the browser feel like it was lagging behind, and navigation at times felt like a chore. When we compare this to the Android version, the iPhone version is lacking, as the Android version is much more finger-friendly and enjoyable to use.
Page rendering
This is another area that Opera Mini does not perform the best in – rendering pages. Half the time, TheMacUniverse will not even load, appearing only as a wide array of symbols and question marks. At others, it will load okay, but weirdly formatted. This applies to many sites, which makes using this browser somewhat frustrating at times.
Summary
The Opera Mini browser is a very good start for Opera on the iPhone platform, but needs work before it will replace the Safari icon on my device. Navigation is quirky and feels like a chore, and pages can be rendered bizarrely. However, a fast and eye pleasing user interface and the sheer speed of the application make this a solid three star application. Check out my video overview, and comparison to the HTC Dream/Android version after the jump.
Pros:
-Very fast
-Eye pleasing user interface
-Less data intensive
Cons:
-Renders pages bizarrely at times
-Navigation needs work
-No Multi-Touch
-Some sites don’t like it
