Opera Mini 6 for iPad is ready for download

One of the most popular mobile browsers in the world is Opera Mini, the perfect little third party software that plays well with most devices on market. Since today you can add three more devices to that list: the iPad, iPhone 4 and iPod Touch, as Opera Mini 6 just appeared in the Apple App store.

I have to tell you that this is not the first version compatible with the iPad, but the first one to support iPad’s screen resolution natively (and the Retina Display on the iPhone 4). This means you don’t have to ignore those large pixels from the previous version anymore, as the Opera Mini 6 will fill the entire area of the iPad and iPad 2 screen, pixel by pixel.

The new resolution support is not the only feature of the 6th version of Opera Mini, as the user interface was modified slightly, with top placement for Options menu, Address bar and Google Search box, just like on the desktop version of Opera.

Other novelties include support for social media sharing of preferred URLs directly from the Options menu. Current supported services are Twitter, Facebook and My Opera. Pinch to zoom and panning is also considerably smoother on the new version, mimicking the included Safari browser. Background tab loading is also a novelty for the Opera Mini 6, which makes it better at multitasking than Apple’s own browser.

Opera Mini 6 for iPad

During the testing conducted by our friends at AllTouchTablet.com is apparent that Opera Mini 6 is a very good alternative to your default iPad and iPad 2 browser and benefits from Opera Turbo and Opera Link functionality. The first one is responsible for compressing your download stream using Opera’s own servers, helping you conserve bandwidth this way. The Link is actually a cloud sync for your bookmarks and speed dial settings (the sites accessible from your main screen). Cloud sync is one of the reasons I use Opera Mini for a some time now.

Here’s also a video presentation of Opera Mini 6: