Opera Software plan to preview Opera Mini for iPhone at the 2010 Mobile World Congress.

“We are thrilled to offer journalists and partners an exclusive preview of Opera Mini for iPhone during the year’s biggest mobile event,” said Jon von Tetzchner, Co-founder, Opera Software.

“This is a unique opportunity to introduce the fast, feature-rich Opera Mini experience for the iPhone, and to showcase our latest beta releases of Opera Mobile and Opera Mini on other platforms and devices. Opera’s mission is to bring the Web to the world, and by making Opera Mini available on yet another platform, we are one step closer.”

Such an exercise by Opera could be completely pointless, as Apple may deny the browser entry to the App store as it may compete directly with the iPhone’s version of Safari.

“We hope that Apple will not deny their users a choice in Web browsing experience,” Tetzchner told Reuters.

Opera also plan on showing other versions of their mobile browsers at the Mobile World Congress which is being held between February 15th and 18th in Barcelona.

Overnight, Opera has released Opera Mini 5 beta 1, and includes many new features.

The browser, which is available for free on a wide variety of phones, now includes tabbed browsing, speed dial, support for both touch and keypad phones, and a password manager.

The preview browser can be downloaded directly to your mobile phone, or from the Opera Mini Next website.

Opera Mini 5 for mobiles is on it’s way, at least according to Opera’s Espen André Øverdahl.

Little information has been revealed, but a splash page has been put up on Opera Next, with the tag line “Coming very soon: The next generation in mobile browsing”.

We will let you know as more information and a beta is released.

Opera sure have been busy, today announcing a deal with Virgin Mobile (USA) to include Opera Mini 4.2 pre-installed on all Virgin Mobile pre-paid phones.

The deal is a welcome move, considering Opera Mini is leaps and bounds above most standard mobile browsers already included with mobile phones. Features include full page rendering with zooming, and the ability to sync bookmarks with a computer.

Mobiles with Opera Mini pre-installed are expected to show up in the next few weeks.

Opera has released the final version of Opera Mini 4.2 for Google Android phones. Opera Mini 4.2 final brings back a lot of the regular features which were disabled in the early beta.

New features include the ability to upload and download files, save pages, and zoom in and out with a double tap.

Users will also be pleased to know that the password bug has now been fixed, and your passwords will be hidden as you enter them in.

Currently there is only one Android phone, T-Mobile’s G1 phone. You can download the browser from the Opera Mini website.

It looks like we won’t see a browser war for the iPhone just yet, with Apple refusing to let Opera Mini be released for the iPhone.

Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, Opera’s co-founder and chief executive said that “Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser.”

Opera Mini is currently available for free for many other phones available today.