Opera Software today made its Coast browser available to the Apple iPhone.
The browser, which is based on the WebKit standard, has been available to the iPad since last year. Coast offers an alternative browsing experience with a simplified home screen, visual search that provides animated text suggestions, and tools that make it simple to access recently visited sites, and share menu information. The browser includes a wide number of wallpapers, iCloud syncing of home screen tiles, and a Stuff We Like section for viewing popular content from across the web. Opera is also offering an updated version of Coast for the iPad, which includes improved security and stability, improved search functions, faster launch times and animations, and support for more types of icons.
Opera first announced its intent to switch to WebKit in February 2013, and has slowly been bringing WebKit-based browsers to the market since. Apple uses WebKit in its own Safari browser, and Google uses WebKit in its Chrome browser.
Opera still offers its older Opera browser to Android smartphones and Opera Mini to the iPhone.
