Softpedia has managed to get the first hands-on session with Opera for iPad at MWC 2011 in Barcelona today. According to Softpedia, Opera for iPad is “blazingly fast!”. Apparently their man on the show floor was particularly impressed with the browser’s speed when you pinch to zoom in and out. Softpedia says that not only is the browser fast, it also runs very smoothly. Opera’s “Visual Tabs” feature lets users have several web pages open at once, and switching between them, via tabs, is also apparently very quick and easy. Each tab enables the previewing of a thumbnail, the page title and page icon.

Interestingly, Softpedia says that the Opera for iPad browser also has its own virtual keyboard that you can use instead of the iPad’s virtual keyboard when you want to type in information on a page, but that seems to be the one feature that their editor was not too enamoured with!

Although Opera did not give Softpedia a specific release date, they say to expect the browser to appear in the App Store as a free download in approximately one week.

Source: MWC 2011: Opera for iPad Preview - Softpedia Exclusive - Softpedia

I'm really looking forward to this release. Opera is by far the best browser I have tried on my iPod Touch. If the iPad version is as good as the iPhone version it will be awesome.

I agree Opera is the best browser and I hope there will be no issues I encountered in iphone while dealing with websites that have some redirects used, such websites won't open in Opera, don;t know why.

Waiting on this release also. Another great browser to add to the collection. I have safari, atomic browser, full browser, and skyfire. With my AlwaysOnPC app, virtual computer in the cloud, i now have desktop firefox. Which loads ALL websites, even flash enabled ones. The only browser to do that. That app turns my ipad into vitual computer. Mouse cursor n everything. Really cool.