Opera, the smallest big browser that is widely acknowledged, has had two impressive feats accomplished recently. It was accepted into the App Store, after numerous failures to get in because of Apple’s restrictive policies, and earned the number-one spot on the top free applications across the boards on the App Store. In 22 App Stores in 22 countries, there stood one app above the rest (now 19 of 22 as of the time of this article being published) in the free category: Opera Mini. It isn’t clear as to whether or not this popularity is do to Opera just being that popular or if the media coverage about the…

In a big surprise for iPhone users in search of choice, Apple has approved the third-party Opera Mini app for the iPhone. This version of Opera Mini has been developed specifically for the iPhone and is impressively fast. This is because it compresses data by up to 90 percent before fetching that data to the device, which has the effect of greatly accelerating page load speed (that’s particularly good if you’re on a slower EDGE network). It took Apple – known to reject apps which emulate those it provides – just three weeks to approve Opera Mini for the iPhone. The free Safari replacement is now available…

There’s an iPhone browser break out beginning, with Opera Software submitting its Opera Mini 5 browser/app for the iPhone to the App Store. All that’s left is to wait and see if Apple will approve the Safari-competing browser….