Last May, a month or so after it was released on Appstore, Opera Mini for iPhone already registered 2.6 million downloads. While many downloaded the app mostly to test it, a substantial number were persuaded to keep using it.

For those who don’t know, Opera Mini is the mobile version of the PC web browser, Opera. This application, supported by the partnership of Google and Opera software, runs in JavaME technology which processes and compresses web pages before it loads in the mobile phone. Which is basically the reason why Opera Mini loads in less time than the iPhone native Safari.

Safari, was designed for the Mac OS and is the default web browser of iPhone. Before Opera Mini was given that go signal, Safari was the only mobile browser that would and could work on iPhone.

In tests conducted on both Safari and Opera Mini, it was found out that the latter could certainly give Safari serious competition:

• It loads pages at around 15 seconds faster than Safari. Since it compresses data from the server, Opera Mini loads a webpage within seconds — even if the page if full of images and other flash elements.
• It has speed dials. Just like the PC version, there are little thumbnails on Opera Mini’s default page which allow users to save frequently-visited web pages, making it easier to go back to them as soon as the browser loads up.
• It has tabbed browsing. Users may open up other tabs to load other pages –all in one Opera Mini window. The number of tabs doesn’t affect the loading time of other pages.
• It offers easy navigation. Users may pinch in to zoom out, or pinch out to zoom in. They may also double tap to extremely zoom in and zoom out, and pan through the page by sliding a finger over the screen.

As of the end of July, Opera Mini was recorded to have already viewed one billion pages. Because of excellent branding and marketing strategies, such as including it as a pre-installed app in various mobile devices, it has reached a broad range of users around the world.

Because of this success, particularly with iPhone users, Opera Mini 5.1 for Android has also been recently made available. It won’t hurt to try this app. After all, it’s FREE.  And you can always go back to Safari if you want to.