Over a year ago Opera Software announced that they had developed a version of their browser for the iPhone, and a few months after that, iPhone users finally got their hands on the first non-Webkit based browser for the iPhone. The version of Opera released for the iPhone was Opera Mini 5, which had been available for other platforms for a while.
Opera Mini neatly cuts around the limitations imposed by Apple’s AppStore terms by hosting their rendering engine on their Opera Turbo servers, and sending prerendered content to the browser. In the process the browsing speed is also boosted as the content comes in a compressed form. Apple’s terms otherwise restrict the rendering engine used by any browser to WebKit, which is already included in the the iPhone and is used by the bundled Safari browser.
Now Opera Software has announced availability of the latest version of their browser Opera Mini 6 for the iPhone. Like the Opera Mini 6 version of other mobile platforms, the iPhone version comes with speed improvements to panning, scrolling, and zooming, a new Share feature for easily sending and posting links to social applications, and of course the new UI.
Opera Mini 6 comes with a new tablet UI that is optimized for the new larger-screen touch devices, and this new UI will be available for those using Opera Mini 6 on an iPad. You can find out more about Opera Mini 6 in our article about the browser here.
You can check out Opera Mini 6 on the Apple App Store. Check out the following video of the browser in action: