Sorry, Steve: iPhone 50 Percent Slower Than Android on Web
They didn't use Safari, they used a custom-written app with an instance of UIWebView. For a variety of (purportedly security-related) reasons, UIWebView has always been slower than Safari, but it's especially pronounced in iOS 4.3, where UIWebView didn't receive any of the Nitro upgrades that Safari did.
An argument can certainly be made that UIWebView being crippled is very much a platform negative (I would agree), but the "study" is purporting to represent the speed of browsing in Safari, which is plainly false.
I know it is the Internet and I should be used to it now but when the first two words of the title are there purely as snark to rile up fan boys, I really lose interest in the article.
From CNET:
Blaze backed away from its conclusion in light of the new data. Chief Technology Officer Guy Podjarny told CNET in a statement: This test leveraged the embedded browser which is the only available option for iPhone applications. Blaze was under the assumption that Apple would apply the same updates to their embedded browser as they would their regular browser. If this is not the case and according to Apple's response, it's certainly possible the embedded browser might produce different results. If Apple decides to apply their optimizations across their embedded browser as well, then we would be more than willing to create a new report with the new performance results.
There seems to be some surprise across the web at this result. Putting aside whether it is a valid result due to UIWebView bugs or the fact that the iPhone processor is clocked lower etc., I would have thought most people would have assumed a browser made by Google would be faster than a browser made by Apple. Google seemed to ignite, and often lead this browser speed competition that makes headlines so often these days.
I regularly see Chrome, Opera, Firefox and recently IE9 boasting the best times in a bunch of dubious benchmarks. Indeed the one that seems to get the most play these days is Sunspider, Apple's own javascript test which you would assume favors them to some degree. Apple's Safari, I don't see so much of. Why would these expectations be reversed in mobile?
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This was an extremely clever study/press-release from Blaze.
The number of "news" outlets picking it up is staggering:
http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=du8BOOH4hczn4YMB-i7ZmzI...
Congrats to them and thanks for the testing service.
I also noticed that the test sites were the sites of all the Fortune 1000 companies.
I'm thinking these might not be ideally representative of the kinds of sites I actually browse. Why not test some more content-rich sites, or the most popular sites, instead?
Follow up post on why the study was flawed: http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/03/17/study-comparing-androi...
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I love open source approach of Android. Also I love IPhone design.
Article cleary states which Android phone was used in the test but doesnt state which iPhone was used. It just says iphone 4.2 and iphone 4.3. Does that mean a iphone 3g on 4.2 and a 3gs on ios 4.3?