Apple has approved the Opera Mini Web browser for the iPhone, somewhat surprising the tech world.
Opera Mini will roll out to the iPhone App Store throughout the day, with the exact time depending on region. Like all other versions of Opera -- and unlike many other browsers in the iPhone App Store, Opera Mini will be free. You can see videos and more screenshots on Opera's Web site.
The Opera team submitted the app in March, after hyping it in the press a month prior. Among the features not duplicated in the iPhone's default Safari browser are customizable skins, find text in page and a grid of favorite links that appear when a new tab is opened.
But Opera Mini's most notable feature is a unique method of loading Web pages. Opera Mini processes Web page data on its own servers and sends a compressed version back to the iPhone. According to the developers, this reduces the amount of data a user must download and boosts speed by up to 90 percent.
The trick, in addition to benefiting users, may have also helped Opera Mini Pass through the App Store. As Macworld pointed out, Apple previously allowed only browsers that use its Webkit engine, in order to prevent apps from downloading and executing code. Opera Mini works around that restriction by offloading those tasks to its own servers.
Because Apple has occasionally barred apps because they duplicate core functionality of the iPhone (most notably, Google Voice), some had assumed Opera Mini would never see the light of day. Fortunately for iPhone users, that's not the case.
Opera Mini's unique way of loading pages means you probably won't see other browsers follow suit without similar methods, but at least iPhone users now have one viable alternative free browser in the App Store.
