It’s been good. No, really, it has. But it’s time to move on. It’s not you, it’s me. I need something more.

As of today, I’m (mostly) dumping Safari for Opera Mini on the iPhone.

It was a surprise to hear that Apple had approved it. I expected Opera Mini to go the way of many apps that replicate functions on the iPhone – rejected. But approve it they did, and it’s now available on the App Store as a free download.

It’s good news for Opera Mini users who have been waiting for the browser to make an appearance.

There are a couple of reasons it makes sense to use Opera. The server side rendering is one; this means that the websites you are browsing are rendered on Opera’s servers before being sent to your iPhone. In practice, it means that the pages will download quicker, and your data plan won’t be hit as hard when you browse.

After an initial false start with it, a few tweaks has got Opera working faster on my iPhone than Safari could hope to.

Of course, there are other issues being raised such as what happens with secure websites and Javascript on pages – hence the reason I’m only “mostly” dumping it- but for the most part, it’s replacing Safari for me.