Mini is a different sort of browser: it's a thin client that displays what the Opera Mini server prepares. When you enter a URL in Mini, the Mini client sends the request to Opera Central. An Opera server visits the public page, and does all the heavy lifting there. Opera Central then creates and sends back a page view built for your device. The Mini client displays that page.
It's a trade-off. It saves both bandwidth and processing power (the full page read and script processing gets done by an Opera server), but it also means Mini can't display most multimedia. On my iphone, it'll usually redirect youtube vids to my youtube app. But Mini won't render HTML5 or Flash or even animated GIFs directly within the Mini app.
Hope this helps.
-jk
