Slashdot Mirror
Opera Mini For iPhone Reviewed
Stoobalou writes "Everyone was mightily surprised when Apple allowed Opera entry to the iTunes App store, but there's one very good reason for the change of heart. Opera Mini for iPhone is not very good." I tried it for a little while, and the one thing that I really liked is how insanely fast switching tabs was.
Opera Mini is intended to run on all phones (even locked down feature phones... and the Iphone). A fairer review would simply review Opera Mini, and take this into account - but of course, it only gets coverage on Slashdot if it's "For the Iphone".
For smart phones, Opera have Opera Mobile which is an excellent browser. Will the Iphone be able to run it?
Even on smart phones, Opera Mini is useful sometimes if you need low bandwidth usage. But it's never intended to be a replacement browser for phones that already have a better browser.
Apple's stated justification for not allowing Flash is that it'll drain the battery and so give a poor user experience.
Common belief is that it is really because it will allow third parties to develop apps in Flash and deploy them on the web (potentially even downloading them to the iPhone), thus bypassing the App Store and Apple's cut of the money.
*Stoobalou's* stated justification for Apple allowing Opera Mini on the iPhone is that it's not very good; Apple has said no such thing.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
That makes no sense because they are pushing HTML5 which allows the same thing (didn't Google come out with Google Voice in January to bypass the App Store?)
They also showcased the netflix app for iPad/iPhone and that would seem to cost iTunes money for videos.
The conspiracy theory doesn't add up.
However the confusing part is that they allow the browser to use CSS, Javascript and even some HTML 5 components, thus making web based applications...
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
No interpreting languages means no javascript which will kill off quite a lot of pages. Also means they can't port the Opera Mobile which is a full fledge browser.
No setting another default browser means you're corralled into Safari.
Fonts is a bit silly, but that might be because the rendering is done on Opera's servers, and they aren't allowed to use Apple's fonts outside of the iPhone?
No importing bookmarks from Safari - if the API doesn't expose that option, you can't really blame Opera for that restriction. If the API does make it possible, it's silly not to have the option.
I've seen quite a few people complaining, that it's not using the iPhone friendly pages, but ... is that a valid complaint? I don't mean "suck it up", but if the webserver doesn't serve up the iPhone pages when Opera Mini on iPhone requests it, that's the server's fault. And to some extent having the server serve up the iPhone page only when Safari/Webkit on iPhone requests the regular page is silly as well. If you can detect Webkit on iPhone, you can probably detect any kind of mobile browser and serve up the mobile page for it. But I have neither a webserver nor an iPhone with Opera on it, so I can't tell you what kind of identifiers Opera Mini gives to the server.
I couldn't use Opera for iPhone for more than a few minutes before abandoning it. Pinching in and out, possibly due to Apple restrictions to be fair, doesn't work well at all--it's not smooth, instead jumping between too far in or too far out. But the worst part is trying to change the pages shown on the home screen, To change or add one you have to hold your finger down on one of the 9 buttons. Then a menu pops up....UNDER YOUR FINGER WHERE YOU CAN'T SEE IT. But if you lift the phone up so you can peek under your finger to try sliding onto the pop up menu, IT DISAPPEARS as you move to it. It's literally impossible to change the home screen. I persistently tried, but had to give up after nearly 2 dozen attempts. It's truly an infernal piece of software. I had high hopes.....
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Of course, they didn't put that much effort into it, considering they didn't know if it was ever going to be approved by Apple. There was a fair risk that their work would go to waste. It will probably improve from now on, now that they breached the door open.
Since Opera's proxy servers do the actual rendering of the page, anything that's accessed via https has to be decrypted by Opera's servers, then re-encrypted and sent back to the user (ala man-in-the-middle).
The conspiracy theory doesn't add up.
They usually don't, except to the conspiracy theorists.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
Opera Mini isn't a browser. I'm sure Adobe could explain why to the layman in about 2 minutes, so make that 5 for legal people.
BULLSHIT!!!! Legal people would require several billable months.
rewriting history since 2109
The initial release looks like a pretty straight port of the native Windows Mobile version, warts and all. To understand some of the weaknesses, you need to understand that Opera Mini was originally just a Java (J2ME) application, and smooth, arbitrary zooming is not something that would have worked well. Thus the Opera Mini proxy sends both a zoomed-in and a zoomed-out version of the page that the browser can jump between to allow the user to zoom in and out, even if it's only two zoom levels. With the greater CPU and graphical power offered by porting the application to Windows Mobile and the iPhone OS, I don't doubt that we'll eventually see an update that simply uses the zoomed-in version of the page and scales it accordingly to implement zooming, but these two ports are relatively new, and the developers obviously haven't yet had a chance to spruce up the rendering beyond what the Java version does already.
In summary, I'd recommend putting it on your iPhone/iPod Touch so that you'll be informed when an update becomes available. I'd wager it will be improved significantly.
Common belief is that it is really because it will allow third parties to develop apps in Flash and deploy them on the web (potentially even downloading them to the iPhone), thus bypassing the App Store and Apple's cut of the money.
What?!?
Commoners appear to be idiots. Apple not only supports Web apps developed in HTML5, but their support for them surpasses most browser vendors. Then Apple allows free application through their store, and Apple pays for all the bandwidth fees on them. Apple's revenue numbers show the App store makes what 1-2% of Apple's revenue compared to the 40% of their revenue from hardware sales of iPods and iPhones. So the common belief is that Apple is willing to make fewer sales in the part of their company that makes all the money by making those products worse, in order to make more money on the part that makes basically nothing and which the CEO has stated is run at near zero profit in order to promote other products. So your "common belief" requires Apple business people to be complete morons who are also lying to shareholders and risking investigation from the SEC.
Seriously, even a freshman business student could tell you the Apps are blades and Apple's model is clearly to make money on the razor. It makes no sense to make it harder for people to provide blades, because Apple runs their blade business just to promote their very, very profitable razor (hardware) business.
Common belief is that it is really because it will allow third parties to develop apps in Flash and deploy them on the web (potentially even downloading them to the iPhone), thus bypassing the App Store and Apple's cut of the money.
Really? If that's the case, then common belief is deluded.
After all, if that's Apple's big fear, then why do they do such a good, and constantly improving, job of supporting the very standards that "allow third parties to develop apps ... and deploy them on the web..., thus bypassing the App Store and Apple's cut of the money"??? Hmm. Two ways to allow third parties to develop apps and run them on iPhones without going through the app store, one way via standards and under Apple's control, one way via a proprietary system not under Apple's control and which on the Mac for many years was a steaming pile of constantly-crashing junk. Maybe their goal is to keep crashing junk off the iPhone. Maybe their goal is to limit iPhone apps to ones that support multi-touch and do not depend on mouse-overs.
Personally, I had never even heard that belief--I suspect it's only among Flash developers who seem to daily come up with a new crazy explanation when the rational one is in front of their face the whole time but they just cannot accept it.
...thus bypassing the App Store and Apple's cut of the money.
That makes no sense because they are pushing HTML5 which allows the same thing
It is not about the money, it is about the control. With HTML5, Apple can still control what is done on the device because only their own Safari can actually display it. They can still change the rules on a whim to disallow certain things being done on their phones. They also know that nobody else can slip in some undocumented API allowing unauthorised scripting on the phone.
Although Apple's attitude reeks of paranoia, I do have some sympathy for them wanting to ban Flash. After all, it is the biggest security hole on virtually every platform on which it runs.
Bah.
I've heard this "Opera browser isn't very good" refrain for awhile now, but what it really boils down to is: "I am used to using XYZ therefore if it doesn't use the same menu as XYZ, it must be inferior." When I first started using Opera it un-nerved me too, but now I'm used to it, and apparently 100 million other Opera users are too.
There's no simple way of transferring you Safari bookmarks to the new Mini browser
True however you can transfer bookmarks from your desktop PC to your iPhone, and viceversa, by using features like MyOpera (online home page). Safari cannot.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Anything less than a fully functioning browser would defeat the iPhone's raison d'être.
However the confusing part is that they allow the browser to use CSS, Javascript and even some HTML 5 components, thus making web based applications...
If they could find a way to prevent this without utterly breaking the entire web or ending up looking like the Devil himself, I’m sure they would.
Umm, their original plan was to only support Web apps as the official API. They added native APIs because so many people wanted them and because Web apps did not perform as well as Apple liked. Saying they would ban Web apps, when that was the foundation of their business plan, reeks of ignorance.
That makes no sense because they are pushing HTML5 which allows the same thing
Initially, Apple only wanted web apps for the iPhone. It took nearly a year for the iPhone SDK and App Store to be opened up. Apple cared mainly about opening up the platform to outside developers. A web app running HTML5 and JavaScript could do very little damage to the iPhone OS whereas a native App has the potential to do more damage.
I still don't think their hatred of Flash is about protecting their revenue stream (which shows why they allow NetFlix streaming). They sell songs on iTunes, but Pandora hasn't hurt that, so I don't think they see NetFlix as a threat either. They probably look at the trade off that having NetFlix would sell more iPads to people who might then buy more stuff from iTunes (music, apps, or videos).
I think their hatred of Flash is really a hatred of... Flash. I don't work at Apple, but I can just about guarantee you they've ported some version of Flash player over to an iPhone in-house and it probably sucks. The same probably applies to the Java Virtual Machine as well. When you have such a crappy intermediary on a phone where user experience is king, Apple doesn't want any part of it.
If you look at some of the other intermediaries that are out there, primarily Unity3D, Apple happily lets them in because they don't affect performance. Yes, you can build crappy apps in Xcode and Unity, but it's also just as easy to write good apps. I imagine in Flash and Java, it's probably hard to write apps that do anything useful, but still live up to Apple's expectations for providing a slick user experience.
Adobe is whining about CS5 apps being blocked, but my prediction is that a CS5 app is going to be sluggish, particularly the touch interface, compared to an Xcode or Unity app. We'll just have to see how it all plays out.
I void warranties.
That's what they want you to think.
You do realize that bookmarks are synced in iTunes if you choose that option? Works on both Windows, and Mac.
I find it amusing that you post that "only their own Safari can actually display" HTML5 on the iPhone in this thread discussing the acceptance of a different browser onto the iPhone/iPad.
Although Apple's attitude reeks of paranoia, I do have some sympathy for them wanting to ban Flash.
There is another problem with allowing flash, it is a very flexible platform that will allow you to put insane load on the processor. That would allow a cross platform benchmark that would very quickly reveal exactly how slow the iPhone processor really is.
The reason they keep the exact specs of the iPhone processor under wraps is that they know it does not compare favourably to the competition. This is not actually a problem though if you can control how people interact with the CPU and ensure it is not overloaded by doing things like running to many applications at once or stupid flash based junk.
One of the reason that Apple have been so successful is by being careful exactly what information they release about each product. The first generation iPhones suffered lag issues in the same way as the early HTC Hero's. This was subsequently fixed by a software update just like the Hero. In the case of the Hero people could find out the CPU spec and then whine about how under powered it was even though it was not really the main thing causing the lag anyway.
Quite often when bringing a hardware and software based device to market people have a habit of reading too much into benchmarks of the hardware even though this often misleading. By writing very clever software you can do an awful lot with even the most underpowered hardware. If you think back to what you could get out of early computers like the Amiga or Atari (512K versions) then this should come as no surprise.
I have a sneaky feeling that if HTML5 falls by the wayside then we may see flash on the iPhones that get multitasking support since we already know that not every iPhone is destined to get this.
I dont read
That's because the conspiracy theorists are still using Pentium-equipped computers.
Isn't Opera Mini for resource starved mobile devices that have a hard time rendering and dealing with semi-complex web pages on the device directly?
It is, but it is also for slow connections - it seems that OBML compresses better than HTML (not surprising, given that it's binary to begin with, and it also doesn't have all that JS in it), and then also they apply lossy compression to the images on Mini servers.
Personally, I find that I rarely use it on Android, and mostly rely on the primary browser instead - but when 3G isn't around, or when roaming (when data rates go through the roof), it's good to have Mini around. And it's free.
The settings allow you to select HTTP or Socket as the protocol. Since HTTP is layered on top of a TCP socket, that makes no sense. I'm guessing it's poor English for "go directly to the site you requested" (HTTP) and "go through our compression server" (Socket). But I wouldn't know how to confirm this guess.
Your guess is wrong. It always goes through Opera servers, because they are much more than just compression servers for the Mini - they handle all actual HTML rendering, interpret JS scripts on pages, and so on. It couldn't work without them.
What this option does is specify how the connection to Opera servers is established. "HTTP" is just what it says - for every navigation you make, it does an HTTP request to Opera servers, and receives OBML for rendering. This has the advantage of working through even the most restrictive proxies (only port 80 opened), and some other platforms on which Mini runs (some J2ME phones, mostly) simply do not have any other connectivity options for applications. However, you get the overhead of HTTP request and response headers.
"Socket" uses Opera own proprietary protocol, which, as I understand, is generally optimized for compactness and efficiency (i.e. tight binary packing, minimal overhead). I also suspect that it tries to maintain connection alive for longer in that mode.
Overall, it's usable, but I agree that it's not very good (yet). Still hopeful that it will get better and cattleprod Mobile Safari improvements when it gets genuinely competitive.
I doubt that a browser that does all rendering and DOM manipulation server-side could possibly ever compete with Safari. Then again, it's not even intended to.
Now if we can get Opera Mobile (the real deal), that would be another matter - that thing has a full-fledged rendering engine, with the same codebase as desktop version, which is the single most conformant engine out there to date with respect to HTML5 & CSS3.
"The conspiracy theory doesn't add up."
I guess it wouldn't to someone who thinks that HTML5 allows "the same thing" as native apps.
Apple specifically disallows anything that would enable downloading and executing any program bypassing the app store. It's not a conspiracy theory, it's the stated policy.
HTML5 video does not allow for DRM
Yes it does. HTML5 does not specify anything about the format of the video - it can be in any container format and CODEC that the client supports. Safari delegates playback to QuickTime, so you can use HTML5 to deliver DRM'd video in any format that QuickTime supports.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Hey, how is Jolicloud? I tried to run it on in virtual machine to try it out and something in the install hung up past my desire that day to look into it. What's your first hand review?
Jolicloud is the holy grail of Ubuntu on netbooks. It's UNR with superior hardware support and a cute web app to install more web apps. It supports practically all relevant netbook hardware, and does it well, e.g. my poor old little EEE 701 is automatically overclocked from 600 to 900 mhz. Unfortunately it's based on Jaunty and not Karmic so it's less trivial to live on the bleeding edge regarding software versions. For the laptops best-supported by moblin there's an Ubuntu moblin edition, so that's also worth looking into — I'm going to try that next for my Aspire D250-1165. Moblin itself fails to properly resume from suspend. Jolicloud worked but had mediocre support for my mediocre GMA950 — it did about as well as Ubuntu though. Moblin has the video support but the resume problem. Meego so far doesn't have a GUI on intel, only on N900? Not sure if it has one even there :p So Jolicloud is probably the best bet for most people. Right now I'm just wishing someone would give me power management support for Athlon 64 L110, for the LT3103u. I'd likely jump to any distribution, even Fedora, for that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"