i was using opera mini on my non-smart sonyericsson Z710 for maybe a year or two before i got my 770 and later N800. and i still fall back to it at times.

i dont see the need for touch screen, and as one can toggle the images of without loosing much (and can download the images one want to see as needed) there is not that much data traffic to talk about.

thing is that with opera mini the page is predigested by a proxy server. yes, you loose some ajaxy shiny bits, but beyond that i have found most pages work out fine.

it even got a release with a new zoom interface right before apple launched its phone with a similar way to browse the web (but i still prefer the single column mode most of the time).

when one is used to java enabled phones, the original iphone ended up less then spectacular. the new firmware however do elevate it somewhat (but i can still install a random jar file on my SE, all iphone apps have to go via apple). i even bumped into a windows app that enabled me to turn any pdf, html or txt file into a jar-file e-book. i read the mirrorshades trilogy that way