Opera Mini on iPhone

[steveapp]

Bear with me here, I haven't gone mad

I don't actually want Opera Mini on my iPhone - though it would be interesting if it could run.

What I want is a similar speed to opera mini, which does some conversion on a server to give you a compressed web page, and therefore a faster experience.

Is there any way to point Safari through such a web cache type solution to speed up edge and gprs browsing ?

Just a thought.

Stephen

 

[johnsibly]

It's a good idea. I've been an opera mini user for several years - it still compares very well even to the iPhone 3G in terms of page load times.

I can load the full BBC News main page in about 5 seconds using opera mini on my Sony 3G phone (unfortunately I'm still waiting for my iPhone I ordered on launch day!)

Do you know if it's possible to set up a proxy for Safari on the iPhone?
If so you could try pointing at one of the the opera proxy servers, e.g.
http://server4.operamini.com:80
and see if you get the mobile optimised pages.

Incidently, I just tried Opera 9.5 beta on a work Windows Mobile device and it's pretty good. Includes the zoom in/out functionality of safari, but also supports multiple tabs. It didn't seem that fast though so I don't think they are running through a proxy, although it is only a beta version so perhaps they are still working on performance.

 

[steveapp]

It's a good idea. I've been an opera mini user for several years - it still compares very well even to the iPhone 3G in terms of page load times.

I can load the full BBC News main page in about 5 seconds using opera mini on my Sony 3G phone (unfortunately I'm still waiting for my iPhone I ordered on launch day!)

Do you know if it's possible to set up a proxy for Safari on the iPhone?
If so you could try pointing at one of the the opera proxy servers, e.g.
http://server4.operamini.com:80
and see if you get the mobile optimised pages.

Incidently, I just tried Opera 9.5 beta on a work Windows Mobile device and it's pretty good. Includes the zoom in/out functionality of safari, but also supports multiple tabs. It didn't seem that fast though so I don't think they are running through a proxy, although it is only a beta version so perhaps they are still working on performance.

Hi

Thanks for this, I will have a play this evening and see where I get. I tried Opera 9.5 and it seems a fair match for Safari in many ways, and works as a direct access full browser (no proxy) so as you said, was a little slow. Also, it seems a little more clunky to use than Safari - though that could be a fair comparison of many phones (particularly Windows Mobile Devices) they do more or less the same thing, Apple does it in a far less clunky way.

Stephen

 

[steveapp]

Not a huge surprise, when i configured my connection to my home wifi (which is usually direct to internet) to go through that server it just returned cannot connect to server error.

It might be different via the gprs / 3g connection but i doubt it and suspect the problem is simply that the server is a very much custom connection. Shame really, that would have been a great solution. I wonder if there are any free / commercial alternative servers and a method of connecting to them.

With PIE I used a cut down low graphics equivalent on some sites, bbc news for example, but it doesnt render very well on Safari - and rss works great but takes you to the full page when you want to read the whole article.

Im going to try and create a home page to use as my main safari page and put a range of useful pages = perhaps 2 version - one for edge and one for 3g / wifi