You might have seen earlier this week that Ars Technica ran a comparison of the Froyo and iOS 4 browsers based on their handling of JavaScript-heavy sites. We knew that Android 2.2 would bring with it improvements in the ability to load JavaScript, and it appears the difference is pretty dramatic. As Ars Technica said, “JavaScript execution in Froyo’s Web browser is almost three times faster than in the previous version of the platform.”
The results were then compared to the SunSoider and V8 benchmarks on the iPhone. It appears Froyo has made all the difference. Again, as Ars Techica finds, “The results show that the Android device delivers significantly faster JavaScript execution than the iPhone, scoring over three time better on V8 and almost twice as fast on SunSpider.” Froyo, it appears, has delivered.
After seeing the JavaScript comparison, the folks at Engadget decided to run a full browser comparison of the two platforms. It wasn’t a perfect study, as they loaded just five sites on each device. Then again, they are five popular sites, so they at least chose ones that users frequently visit on mobile devices. The first test was with the stock settings, meaning Flash was loading in the Android browser. The findings appeared nearly identical. Three sites had the same load times on both devices, while the other two were split between the Nexus and the iPhone.
Then, enterprising bloggers that they are, they decided to run the Nexus without Flash, since the iPhone’s lack of Flash might give it a speed advantage. This time the results produced just one tie, while the Nexus loaded four of the sites faster. As Engadget’s Richard Lai notes in the comments, this suggests that most mobile web surfers won’t notice too big a difference between the browsers. While JavaScript-heavy sites figure to load faster on the Nexus, sites not as heavily coded with JS will produce similar results. Of course, having Flash on the Nexus browser does represent a significant advantage.
