Opera Mini 5 running on an iPhone looks and behaves almost identically to Opera Mini 5 on other mobile browsers, like Java and BlackBerry. The one major exception is the addition of session restore for iPhone, which will reload browsers from the previous session if you need to close and restart iPhone. This is an important feature for a platform that only runs one third-party application at a time. Page caching was also notable on the demo version of Opera Mini for iPhone. Pressing the back arrow quickly surfaced the page before without reloading it from scratch.
As interesting as these details might be, the real elephant of the question in the room--the one perhaps being asked by those who follow Apple's submissions and rejections--is why Opera would go to lengths to submit a browser that has a high chance of being cut short. Apple isn't known for approving browsers that aren't based on Webkit, and Opera Mini absolutely falls into the latter category. Like many other iPhone apps, it's written in the Objective C programming language on the backend, Opera's founder and former CEO Jon von Tetzchner told CNET, and on the front end is written "in our own little language."
But Opera's von Tetzchner has high hopes that Apple will accept Opera Mini, starting off by citing Opera's merits of speedy browsing, high compression rates that lead to rapid loading, and bookmark-syncing, and ending with the opinion that users should have plenty of choice, specially if Opera Mini is in high demand. Opera's conviction would hardly seem like a compelling enough reason were we in charge, and we can't imagine it would sway Apple.More on the mark, perhaps, is the argument that Apple shouldn't nix Opera Mini because it may not directly violate rules laid out in Apple's software development kit (SDK). Unlike other Web browsers (including Opera Mobile,) Opera Mini is a proxy browser that delivers Web pages through Opera's servers. It isn't a standalone HTML browser that interprets and executes code on its own. This loophole alone is the more realistic justification that von Tetzchner and the rest of the Opera team should hope would get Opera Mini through the golden doors.
"The way we read things, we don't violate anything with [Apple's] SDK license," von Tetzchner told CNET. "From our perspective, there's no reason why Apple would not allow Opera...It brings something really different to iPhone users."