45,000 Browser Tests Say Android Browser More Than 50% Faster Than iOS’s Safari
Not that we didn’t already know it, but Ottawa-bred Blaze Software has issued a press release revealing results of extensive browser tests they carried out on Safari for iOS and Android’s stock browser. (To be specific, the latest Android handsets running 2.2 and 2.3 were used on our side, while iOS tests were carried out on iPhone 4 handsets running 4.2 and 4.3.)
1,000 different websites were tested with several tests, totaling 45,000 separate tests – I’d say that makes for some pretty accurate results when all is said and done. As for those results, Android proved to load pages 52% faster than iOS on average. Again, not really surprising as we know the folks at Google are always aiming toward improving the performance of their stock browser. We first saw Android run circles around iOS in a series of tech demos at Google I/O last year.
Blaze’s CTO Guy Podjarnyin was surprised, though. “We were very surprised by the results”, said Guy Podjarny, Blaze CTO and Co-Founder. “We assumed that it would be [a] closer race and that the latest JavaScript speed improvements would have a more material impact on performance. The fact that Android beat iPhone by such a large margin was not expected”.
It’s something we’ve known for a long time, Guy, but now you know. Better late than never, right? Read on for full press details.
iPhone vs. Android – 45,000 Tests Prove Whose Browser is Faster
Ottawa, ON, March 17, 2011 – Blaze Software Inc released today the largest ever research study of smart phone browser performance. The purpose of the study was to determine once and for all which of the two leading smart phone vendors has the fastest browser.
Mobile Web browser usage is exploding. Emarketer estimates that 44.1% of US citizens will leverage mobile Internet by 2014. To capture market interest in mobile browsing, smart phone vendors have been aggressively touting the speed improvements in their products. However, due to the lack of mobile measurement tools, it has been difficult to measure which smart phone actually has the faster browser.
After taking over 45,000 measurements on the latest iPhone and Android devices, the study found that Android was 52% faster than iPhone on average. Android finished loading a Web page faster on 84% of the 1000 Websites tested. The study also found that the despite significant JavaScript performance gains in the latest Apple iOS 4.3 release and Google Android 2.3 releases, these improvement made no measurable improvement on the actual page load times of the sites tested.
“We were very surprised by the results”, said Guy Podjarny, Blaze CTO and Co-Founder. “We assumed that it would be closer race and that the latest JavaScript speed improvements would have a more material impact on performance. The fact that Android beat iPhone by such a large margin was not expected”.
What makes this study unique is the size of the study and the fact that it used real phones on real world websites to make the measurements. Past studies have often used fabricated benchmark sites or manual measurements on a small number of sites. This study was made possible through custom apps developed to measure page load time on mobile devices. These apps run on the actual devices, load a page on demand, and measure how long it took. These agents are available as a free service to measure any site with the Blaze Mobitest Tool.
Detailed blog post on the Blaze Mobile Measurement Study
For more information on the details results and methodology of the study, please see: www.blaze.io/blogFor more information on the Mobile measurement service
Blaze’s mobile measurement service can be found at: www.blaze.io/mobileAbout Blaze
Blaze was founded in 2010 with a mission to help clients deliver better performing Web businesses by optimizing websites to increase website speed. Blaze provides a hosted Web Performance Optimization service that improves frontend performance and reduces operational costs. For more information, see: www.blaze.io