Quick Web browser test & comparison: latest Iris and Opera Mobile versions

[Guest Menneisyys]

I’ve quickly tested the latest, current Iris and Opera Mobile versions, 1.1.9 and 9.7b1, respectively. (The former is available HERE, the latter HERE) I’ve done so on both VGA (the IPAQ 210 and the HTC Universal) and QVGA (the HTC Wizard) devices.

Of the two, I’d definitely go with Opera Mobile as it’s definitely closer Safari (or iCab Mobile) on the iPhone. While Iris does get better and better over time, it’s still nowhere as fast and easy-to-use as Opera Mobile. Furthermore, it still has rendering problems affecting particularly QVGA users. (And, on VGA, causing pretty small character sizes, particularly in Portrait orientation. Needless to say, it’s not possible to change the character size in Iris, unlike in Opera Mobile [see Settings / Display / Minimum Font Size])

On QVGA: with some sites, no problems at all with OM; with Iris, you MUST switch to Column mode; otherwise, the text is unreadable

Some of the disadvantages of Iris 1.1.9 compared to OM 9.7:

Iris: Impossible to directly copy text from Web pages to the clipboard. In Opera Mobile, all you need to do is select the appropriate menu item from the page context menu.

Open in new tab: still not supported (while it does exist in OM’s link context menu)

Impossible to disable animations, which kinda slows down working

No plug-ins

Much slower to load pages than OM 9.7 on the HTC Wizard

No “stop page loading” icon or even menu at all

To see the rendering difference, check out the test suite pages linked from HERE (more specifically, the Formatting (first) group in the chart. Basically, Iris is still suffering from exactly the same problems as with the, back in January, tested version 1.0.16 (1.1.0 b3).

[Guest David Strange]

I have Iris installed solely for checking Google Reader. It has the iPhone layout which is best for mobile devices.

Cheers,

David.