Opera Mini for iPhone Soon

Apple

has enjoyed and continues to earn loads of accolades for the iPhone which is considered one of the better mobile browsing devices today. However, Safari for iPhone will now face a challenge - Opera Mini. At the upcoming Mobile World Congress 2010 convention, Opera has announced that it will unveil new Opera Mini for iPhone. To be honest, this was long due and a much deserved web browser option for the mobile phone users. Many eyebrows are raised since Apple had canned Opera's desire to introduce iPhone version of the mobile web browser.

Back in October 2008, the then Opera CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner told us in an interview that Opera on iPhone "would need Apple to change their policy of not allowing competing software applications on the iPhone." But after that, third-party browsers did make a debut for Apple iPhone.

Technology pundit John Gruber wrote on his blog Daring Fireball that Opera Mini didn't show up since the code base was written in Java and iPhone doesn't support Java in any form. Tested in the Java ME platform, running Opera Mini on iPhone would require a Java ME runtime environment on iPhone. But that violates the iPhone SDK Agreement guidelines which states:

3.3.2 - An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).

At the upcoming MWC 2010, Opera will show off Opera Mini for iPhone along with the Opera mobile web browsers for other mobile platforms. Earlier, Opera never confirmed that it had a working version of Opera Mini for iPhone but now, it surely does. The press image of the Opera suggests that Opera Mini for iPhone will have speed dials just like Opera Mini for other mobile platforms.

It would be interesting if Firefox also follows the Opera's footsteps. Google too can do a damage here by launching Chrome's mobile version for iPhone but the fact is the Chromium community has just got its browser working for Mac OS X. Now, we'll have to wait till MWC 2010 to watch Opera Mini for iPhone running.

Note that Opera hasn't clarified, at this moment, whether Opera Mini would be an individual download or free App available from Apple App Store.