An alternative web browser for the iPhone has hit the App Store; Opera Mini for iPhone was recently submitted for approval, and has now been released. This will come as a pleasant surprise to many, as Apple are notoriously reluctant to grant approval to any apps which mimic the iPhone’s build in apps and functions.

One of the reasons Opera Mini for iPhone is likely to have been approved is thanks to the compression techniques employed to help speed up web browsing. Any page you view is routed through Opera servers where it is compressed to reduced page loads times. The results are noticeable on both 3G and wireless connections, but 3G users will see the greatest benefits.

See how the Softwarecrew website renders in Opera (left) and Safari

The standard level of compression offered helps to speed things up greatly, but things can be improved further if image quality is lowered. Whether or not you are happy to do this will depend on the type of site you are visiting – poor quality images may be acceptable for news sites, but this is not the case for photography sites, for example.

But page loads times are not the only advantage of switching from Safari to Opera. The ability to search for text on a page is a feature Safari lacks, but it is present in Opera Mini for iPhone. Tabbed browsing is, unsurprisingly, also present, and it is implemented in a slightly different way to Safari.

Rather than viewing a full page preview of tabs which have to be scrolled through, Opera Mini for iPhone makes use of just a small section of the page at the bottom of the screen. Small preview tabs show just enough details to determine which site a particular tab relates to, and horizontal scrolling can be used to navigate through a large collection of tabs.

This allows for easy site switching, and access to your favourite sites can be achieved using bookmarks – which can be synchronised with other computers using Opera Link – or Speed Dial for access to your nine favourite sites.

Everything else you would expect from a browser can be found in Opera Mini for iPhone – autocomplete, password saving, offline browsing for saved pages. All of this is well thought out and presented, but there’s no getting away from the fact that Opera will surge in popularity thanks not only to its accelerated browsing, but also because it is the only alternative to Safari currently available.

But Opera is not completely perfect. When visiting a site in Safari, if a mobile version of the site is available, this is the one that will be loaded. Opera Mini for iPhone will often deliver the full site which means a lot of panning a zooming is required. Unlike Safari, Opera only has two levels of zoom – full page width or zoomed in – and there is no way to change this. Double tapping or using the pinch gesture simply switches between these two zoom levels.

Available free of charge, there’s simply no reason not to install Opera Mini for iPhone. It is likely that you will run it alongside Safari to start with, but there is a strong possibility that it will ultimately become your default mobile web browser.