Nexus S Beats iPhone 4 In 'Real World' Web Browsing Tests

bongey writes "In a series of measured real-world web load tests, the Android-based Nexus S phone spanked the iPhone 4. The Android phone and iPhone 4 median load times were 2.144s and 3.254s respectively. The sample size was 45,000 page loads, across 1000 web sites. It also follows rumors that Apple is intentionally slowing down web apps to make their native apps more favorable."

Re:Android/iPhone UI performance

[Digicaf]

This has a lot to do with hardware acceleration in the GUI, which for the most part isn't there in any Android below 2.3. I bought my Droid 2 last september and noticed exactly what you mention. In 2.3, that's no longer true. It feels MUCH smoother. In fact, my wife went out a month ago and picked up a low end device (with 2.3) that has a much better response rate and feel despite having a processor only half as fast.

Re:Bogus

[coldfarnorth]

First, read the article written by the folks who did the test: http://www.blaze.io/uncategorized/mobile/iphone-vs-android-45000-tests-prove-whose-browser-is-faster/ [blaze.io]

Here, they address this point. First, they compared their app's times with Safari's times, and found no noticeable difference. Second, they point out that javascript performance accounts for a small fraction of the load times (see large yellow box at the top of the page), and if Nitro was not in use, they estimate that using it would improve Safari's load times, but would not dramatically change the results.

Re:Bogus

[Anonymous Coward]

First, read the article written by the folks who did the test: http://www.blaze.io/uncategorized/mobile/iphone-vs-android-45000-tests-prove-whose-browser-is-faster/ [blaze.io]

Here, they address this point. First, they compared their app's times with Safari's times, and found no noticeable difference.

Nothing in your link supports this. Their update (http://www.blaze.io/business/embeded-browser-vs-native-browser/ [blaze.io]) basically admits that they ran a flawed test, and blames Apple for optimizing its browser.

Second, they point out that javascript performance accounts for a small fraction of the load times (see large yellow box at the top of the page), and if Nitro was not in use, they estimate that using it would improve Safari's load times, but would not dramatically change the results.

JavaScript is not the only difference between safari and an embedded web renderer. Safari has different caching and multithreading as well.

Re:Bogus

[oh_my_080980980]

Except that was not the point of the comparison. The test was comparing web page load time.

Epic fail criticism. Not too mention app developers would have access to the update engine. Good grief.

Well... no.

[joh]

First, Apple isn't "intentionally slowing down web apps to make their native apps more favorable." They have added a new JS interpreter (actually a just-in-time JS compiler) to Safari, but not to the "normal" web views that other apps can embed. This means only Safari is faster now, others are as fast as before.

Second, this test is flawed since it does not use Safari. It uses a custom app which uses neither the new JS engine nor the better caching of Safari or asynchronous multithreading.

Re:Bogus

[iluvcapra]

I think you don't understand the problem. The headline is "Android's browser is faster than iPhone's browser," but all they ever tested was:

The measurement itself was done using the custom apps, which use the platform’s embedded browser. This means WebView (based on Chrome) for Android, and UIWebView (based on Safari) for iPhone.

UIWebView is not Safari, and neither WebView nor UIWebView are "browsers."