Does php5.3 support mysqli extension without any additional manual configurations/updates?

I've built a PHP based website with MySQL as the back-end, and am planning to put it online now. The issue is that I've used mysqli extension in the PHP scripts extensively, and right now I'm worried that not many web hosts are supporting this mysqli extension (atleast a majority of the free/ paid-but-cheap ones). I do not have a heavy budget to get a dedicated server; I would need shared services.

So I was looking around for a solution, and read this in php.net site:

PHP 5.3.0+ On Windo开发者_运维百科ws, for PHP versions 5.3 and newer, the mysqli extension is enabled and uses the MySQL Native Driver by default. This means you don't need to worry about configuring access to libmysql.dll.

I happen to use PHP5.3.0, so does this mean that if I select a PHP web host with PHP version atleast 5.3.0, I would have no trouble running these mysqli extension based scripts? Would any additional configurations be required even if the version is 5.3+?

I'm answering "Would any additional configurations be required even if the version is 5.3+?"

Yes. It's used the same way. It's still an extension like it's been since PHP 5 (?). Like the mysql (without i) extension, it must be enabled.

Chances are higher your shared hosting supports MySQLi than PHP 5.3 though...