Lifehacker Editor-in-Chief Adam Pash tested Safari and Opera Mini on his iPhone 3G in a post dated April 13, the day the browser became available in the app store. Pash compared the start time, page load time and JavaScript, DOM and CSS speed of the two browsers.
"It's pretty clear that, while Opera Mini features seriously impressive page load times, it's still behind Mobile Safari on several levels," Pash wrote.
Safari was the winner for browser launch speed, because once it's been launched once, it stays in the iPhone's memory, making subsequent launches much quicker. Not so for Opera Mini, which had to re-load itself into memory on every launch, Pash wrote.
In page loads, Pash found Opera Mini to be 4 or 5 times faster. Opera's publishers say it uses only a tenth of the bandwidth of other browsers, compressing web pages by up to 90 percent. (They do this by sending the page to an Opera server, which compresses the page and sends it to you.)
Pash declared Safari the winner for JavaScript, DOM and CSS speed, because Opera Mini didn't run any of the tests at all.
"If Opera could keep the speed and fix some of the rough edges, it could be really impressive," Pash concluded.
Opera announced in February that it was working on a version of the browser for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It submitted the browser for approval in March, and had the app approved in April.
Opera also offers a version of its browser for Mac OS X, as well as other platforms.
