After a long wait, Opera has finally made its official entry via the iTunes AppStore to the iPhone / iPod touch and hopefully soon to the iPad aswell. Opera Mini 5 felt faster than Safari on my iPhone 2G. The mobile safari lags a little on my 2 yr old hardware, but Opera Mini 5 seems to have brought new life to browsing.
One major problem (or perhaps a small setting that would change soon) is the iPhone friendly websites dont work on the opera mini. Personally I love the Gmail (including gmail for apps) optimized for the iPhone. I have completely lived on it without using the default Mail app at all and it works amazingly even over an EDGE connection. However the moment Opera Mini comes in, Gmail loads its standard mobile site, which isn’t bad- but nowhere close to the awesome Safari version for iPhone / iPod touch.
Other than that the usual web surfing is smooth and I would wait for Google to fix this little thing before I start using Opera Mini on my iPhone!