Not 24 hours ago I was eagerly awaiting the release of Opera for iPhone, so I was very happy to see Opera publish this press release. About 20 minutes later, the time it took to actually get into the store, it was on my phone. I was personally one of the first people to write a review on iTunes where I gave it 3 of 5 stars, just so it wouldn’t be completely looked over. The browser itself is only a big deal because it is the first non-Webkit browser in the application store. I don’t actually know how much of a feat this is, as in I haven’t heard about any other browsers actually getting denied, but Opera did a great job building up the hype for the release. Not to long ago they released a video showing Opera running on an iPhone 3Gs right beside MobileSafari. Opera absolutely creamed it on EDGE which got a lot of people stirring. Because of Apple’s super closed environment not many people, myself included, expected them to actually accept the application because it obviously “directly duplicates functionality on the device,” which is one of the reasons Apple has to deny your application.
Yet since there was so much hype about Opera coming to the iPhone and it would’ve been very strange for Apple to deny an application that has many very similar counterparts already in the store, they actually accepted it. Whether they did that because of their good will, Opera’s countup timer to see if they would actually approve it, or the fact that it’s UI is so terrible they just felt sorry for them. That’s right I said it, the user interface of Opera is about 10 times worse than that of Opera on my Mac, and that’s saying something. Don’t get me wrong yet, there are a few cool features to Opera Mini that I definitely like, they just don’t out weigh how disgusting it is. Let’s go with the happy stuff first.
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