Settings
Mobile Safari doesn’t offer much in the way of useful preferences (although it’s nice to be able to turn on that Bookmarks Bar), while Opera Mini lets you turn images off, control text wrapping and even select mobile or desktop view. Unfortunately, Opera Mini seems to get confused on sites like Amazon, alternating between mobile and desktop views whenever it feels like it.

Saved Pages
Sure, you can always bookmark a page, but then you’ll have to wait for it to load again. Opera Mini shows Mobile Safari how it’s done by offering Saved Pages for quick access later. To save a page you’re currently on, tap the big red O > Saved Pages and then add the page -- you’ll get to rename it if you’d like, then tap Save. You can access the Saved Pages from the same place.

Opera Link
If you’re already using the desktop Opera browser, you’re just a couple taps away from getting those bookmarks and Speed Dial numbers synced to your iOS device. Tap the big red O, tap Settings and turn Opera Link on (it will turn a yellowish orange), then either sign up or enter existing credentials. Opera Sync also makes it easy to move from another mobile phone this way.

Start Page
Surprisingly, Opera Mini has a leg up on Mobile Safari with the ability to keep your most-loved websites available as soon as the app starts up, thanks to the Start Page. If you don’t like the preset Opera Mini sites, tap and hold on them until a menu pops up where you can either Clear the site or Edit it -- tap “+” to add a new one. A feature like this is on desktop Safari, so eventually it will make its way to iOS, we’d imagine.

Blind Stinkin’ Speed
Mobile Safari may have met its match in one area, and that’s raw speed. We pulled up the home page of MacLife.com in Opera Mini and it was ready in a patience-pleasing 7.7 seconds versus Mobile Safari, which decided to fart around for a full 12.6 seconds before it finished rendering the same page. Opera Mini also gets a nod for compressing incoming data by up to 90 percent, making those page loads feel even faster.

Contextual Menus
Mobile Safari makes it easy to select, copy and paste text or even act on links -- but Opera Mini has a new twist of its own. Tap and hold on a URL and you’ll get a contextual menu with options to open the page in a new tab or select the text, while doing the same with text allows you to quickly select a whole block of text, then copy or search within it straight away.

Social Sharing
Mobile Safari allows you to email a link to any page, but Opera Mini does it one better with the ability to share links on Facebook, Twitter and the company’s own My Opera social networking site. Advantage: It’s kind of a tie, since Opera Mini doesn’t offer email at all, and sometimes it’s handier to send links that way.

What’s This Crap About Installing Flash?
Ruh-roh -- Opera Mini grinds to a halt when it comes to a Flash video file, while Mobile Safari cheerfully offers to play the embedded HTML5 version, if available. See for yourself in this side-by-side comparison with last week’s Mac|Life Show, which is totally unwatchable via Opera Mini. We shed tears…