I then put my phone into 2G mode, and Mini still did quite well–but it only seemed a bit swifter than Safari. I used it on 3G and Wi-Fi, and it felt reasonably snappy but not outrageously more so than Apple’s Safari. So far, I’ve only tried the browser in the comfort of my own home.

Opera Mini’s signature feature is the way it compresses Web pages on the server side, then sends the browser a slimmed-down version to speed things up. And hey, making trouble for browser companies that wish to run on your operating system is demonstrably bad juju. It can be pretty confident that Safari will remain by far the iPhone’s dominant browser even if Opera Mini does quite well. Apple isn’t involved in epic battle with Opera (unlike, say, Google).

I figured the app would make it because…well, I couldn’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t. I was off by one week: Mini is now available as a free download. Three weeks ago, Opera submitted the iPhone version of its Opera Mini browser to Apple for approval, and I cheerfully predicted it would show up on the App Store within a couple of weeks.

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