iPhone app: Opera Mini 5

Yesterday, Apple stunned the tech world by approving Opera Mini 5 into the AppStore. Opera is a well known cross-platform desktop browser that holds a 2.2% global browser market share. Opera mini is a mobile version of the browser which is also available on Android, S60, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and even the Nitendo DSi. The release of the browser is a true milestone for iPhone app developers, because it is first true alternative to Safari, Apple’s built-in browser. Since the AppStore opened in 2008, many developers have seen their apps rejected because it “duplicated default features of the iPhone OS”. Well, the wave of rejections may be drying out thanks to the door Opera mini opened, but only time (and Steve Jobs) will tell.

Interface and design

The first thing you’ll notice after Opera has started is the speed dial – a signature function feature on the desktop version as well. The speed dial is basically a screen with 9 icons on it, each one of these representing a user specified website. The icons are filled with a screenshot of the website, but the results can be a little off: in TechHaze’s case, only the “aze” of haze was visible, and there’s no option to resize or change the icon.
On top of the screen is the navigation bar, in which you can type an URL. The bar remembers your previous trips on the net and also displays the websites you’ve saved on the speed dial, which is a great time saver. On the right is a search box in which you can specify the search service. Included are Google, Dictionary.com, eBay, IMDb and wikipedia. You can manage the search engines, but there’s only an option to remove some, not add them.
Right below is an other, rather irritating input box, “Recommend to a friend”. I did try to recommend to a friend to see if the box would then disappear, but it does not. This isn’t a good thing, as every pixel on the small iPhone screen counts.

On the bottom are five icons: two arrows for back and forward during browsing (one of which transforms into a zoom out button in case you’ve pinched and zoomed into a page), a reload button, a setting button, and a tab button. That’s right, Opera handles tabs. Not in the same way a desktop browser would, but it does a fairly good job at showing you the webpages you’re browsing on. Basically, a small popup shows up when you hit the button, displaying the websites just like the speed dial does. The settings menu opens a world of options:

Bookmarks, as you may have guessed is a bookmarks manager. No surprises here, the usual folder/add/delete functions are here, but I do miss the ability to display favicons in the list, as the default bookmark icons looks like a corrupted windows file icon.

History is also very familiar, displaying your previous browsing activities. There’s a handy little “Clear all” key for those of you who just refuse to follow Apple’s anti-porn crusade.
Start page takes you to the speed dial, but without opening a new tab.
Saved pages allows you to save pages for offline use and browse them.
Settings is another submenu that will allow you to choose wether you want to load images or not, choose the image quality, the font size, fullscreen, mobile view, to set privacy options such as password memory and cookie acceptance, to activate “Opera link”, a bookmark synchronisation service, and to access advanced options such as http or socket protocol selection.
Find in page is a handy page searcher that will highlight content matching your input.
Help will display a not so helpful menu displaying version info and copyrights.

The overall UI is well designed and quite snappy. The grey interface reminds me a lot of the desktop version, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, there are few flaws – the lack of control on the speed dial icons and the “recommend to friend” field spoil the experience a little. I prefer Safari’s simplicity, and I also prefer the way safari handles the multiple open windows.

Browsing experience and speed

But an good UI and good bookmarks management isn’t all users are looking for in a browser: if it takes ages to load a page, the best user interface in the world will be useless. The browsing experience is a complex mix of usability, speed, responsiveness and good settings management.

First of all, it’s worth pointing out that Opera Mini has one big roadblock for iPhone and iPod touch users: Apple doesn’t allow you to set any other application as the default for web browsing, so if you’re opening links from other applications, like Mail, you’ll still launch Mobile Safari when you click that link. (To use Opera Mini, you’d have to copy the link, close Mail, open Opera Mini, and paste the link.) That’s not so convenient, but it’s not the end of the world, especially since more and more apps display links in-app unless you explicitly choose to open a link in Safari.

Boot load time is a little bit tricky to measure because Safari is conserved in the iPhone’s RAM once it has been opened, giving it a clear advantage for warm starts. Opera, on the other had, performs much better on cold starts.
Browser speed difference leaves no room for error: Opera is really faster than Safari, which can be explained by the fact that it uses a proxy to connect itself to a server that will size the requested website down before sending it to the phone. Tested while connected to wifi, average of 20 pages such as BBC.com or NYTimes.com.

The proxy system may speed things up, but the sad truth is that the website display quality suffers from it immensely. The gradients are broken down, CSS markup is messed up, text is not displayed correctly and when in zoomed out overview mode, it forms tiny black blocks that are just not readable. Safari may take a few more seconds to load pages up, but at least they are displayed correctly (Safari left, Opera right).

Verdict

I still have hope for Opera. After all, they’ve been on the iPhone for just one day, and they have plenty of time to make improvements till the release of iPhone OS 4. One of its strength is the speed, and this may appeal to people who live in areas with poor network connections or who would like to cut down on roaming data costs. If you’re looking for a desktop-like browsing experience though, you might want to stick with Safari for the moment.
Opera Mini 5 is free. Here’s a short video, enjoy: