Opera Mini for iPhone is now available on the app store as a free app. It is the first browsing app that Apple approves which doesn’t use the Safari rendering engine.
I installed it this morning on my 3GS and I can say I am impressed. I disabled both WiFi and 3G and used it over EDGE, and I can say it’s blazing fast, way faster than Safari. I even think Opera Mini running on EDGE is visibly faster than Safari running on 3G. If battery life is a concern for you, then install Opera and disable WiFi and 3G. This will improve your battery life significantly while also improving your browsing experience.
The app behaves a little different than Safari, in which the pinch to zoom gesture doesn’t seem to work, but that wasn’t problem. I barely used that in Safari anyways and I really don’t miss it in Opera. Tabbed browsing is also a little different. I can’t decide if it’s better than Safari’s or not, all I can say is that it’s comfortable and easy to use.
One nice improvement over Safari is the preferred sites view at start-up: each time you start Opera it will show you a small bookmarks grid, each bookmark being a snapshot of the site it points to. Very handy if you have a set of sites you access frequently.
