The Opera iPhone app the web browser company was touting last month at Mobile World Congress has been submitted for approval for the iPhone App Store. It promises speedy loading times, even when signal is weak, but will Apple say yes to a serious Safari rival?
Opera Mini and Mobile are available on most phone platforms already, but now at long last, an Opera iPhone app could be coming to join them. The browser, which was shown off behind closed doors in Barcelona last month, has been submitted for approval, which it will need from Apple to be made available for download on the App Store.
While we’ve yet to see more than one image of Opera Mini for iPhone in operation, we know that it won’t offer multitouch pinch zooming like Safari on the iPhone. However, the Opera iPhone app will use server side compression to crunch data for you: that means it’ll minimise the amount of data from a website required to be sent on your phone, promising fast page load times.
Opera says it has met all submission guidelines with the Opera iPhone app, but Apple is the final arbiter of what goes on the App Store, and is known to reject apps on a whim, particularly ones which emulate core functions of iPhone OS. Whether the Opera iPhone app will make it through the gauntlet like Spotify, or be struck down as Google Voice was, remains to be seen, but we should find out in a few days.
Out TBC | £TBC | Opera
