Opera Mini coming to the iPhone — maybe

Opera has developed a version of its Opera Mini web browser for the Apple iPhone and while it has so far been tight-lipped on the app, it did give a demo of it at MWC this week.

Unfortunately, Opera didn’t allow anyone to video Opera Mini in action, but the opinion of those who saw it in action is that it is very, very fast, which pages appearing “instantly” after an initial short delay. Opera did allow its Opera Mobile browser for Android app to be captured on video and while this isn’t the same deal as Opera Mini, it at least gives an idea of the Opera browser experience:

Opera Mini has yet to be submitted for App Store approval and there’s some discussion about whether or not Apple will let it through the gates. The expectation in some parts is that the app will be rejected — Apple has previously rejected applications that duplicate existing core iPhone functionality (most notably Google Voice), and non-WebKit-based web browsers also seem to be given short shrift (third-party web browsers available in the App Store all use the iPhone’s Safari engine).

Apple also forbids third-party apps that can execute third-party code — something that caught Commodore 64 emulator our last year. Web browsers, of course, can execute code via JavaScript, which suggests another black mark against Opera Mini.

Opera Mini, however, isn’t a web browser is the strictest sense of the term. Originally developed for Java-enabled mobile phones that can’t run native applications, all page requests are sent via Opera’s proxy servers, which grab the page and compress it before sending it back to the application. This accounts for Opera Mini’s speed at displaying pages, but it also means that the app isn’t actually executing any code of its own — just displaying information that’s been pre-processed by a remote server.

Opera Mini, of course, has had a brush with the App Store before. Back in October 2008, Opera CEO declared that a version of the app was complete, but that Apple had rejected it out of hand. Opera has since stated that the app wasn’t actually submitted for approval, so it will be interesting to see how Apple responds to Opera Mini this time around.

[via Macworld]