Opera Mini 5 to be launched for the iPhone

The first thing I do every time I get a new phone (be it a smartphone or just your run of the mill featurephone) is to install the Opera Mini mobile web browser. What makes this browser so special that I would want to use over the pre-installed one? Well when you look up a web page on Opera Mini, the browser sends the request to servers on their end, the server will then use a compression technology to make the page smaller, in turn making it possible for the page to load much faster on your phone.

Unfortunately though, I was shown the wagging finger when I was searching for the browser to be used on my iPhone. Apple currently only allows browsers that are based on their own open sourced webkit software that Apple’s desktop & mobile Safari browser is based on. So basically what you end up with is a slew of browsers that are merely a “skinned” version of Safari.

Opera Software ASA is planning on changing this during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week. During a press release on February 10 the Norwegian company announced that they will be offering an exclusive sneak peek of the Opera Mini web browser for iPhone next week at MWC.

“‘We are thrilled to offer journalists and partners an exclusive preview of Opera Mini for iPhone during the year’s biggest mobile event,’ said Jon von Tetzchner, Co-founder, Opera Software. ‘This is a unique opportunity to introduce the fast, feature-rich Opera Mini experience for the iPhone, and to showcase our latest beta releases of Opera Mobile and Opera Mini on other platforms and devices. Opera’s mission is to bring the Web to the world, and by making Opera Mini available on yet another platform, we are one step closer.’”

Opera Software mentions that “Opera Mini for iPhone is not publicly available” so it is anyone’s guess as to when they plan to release it to the masses. And given Apple’s restrictions regarding web browsers on the iPhone it may never even make it to the AppStore. If it ends up getting rejected will Opera plan on making the browser available to jailbroken iPhones? What do you think? Are you looking forward to this next week or are you perfectly content with the iPhone’s native browser?

Via Opera Press Release