Seeing as I’ve just declared the Archos Android Tablet as (possibly) the fastest ARM-based browsing device ever, it makes sense to show you someone else’s test on a similar platform. Engadget did a single Engadget page load test on the Motorola Droid which is running Android 2.0 on the Ti OMAP 3430 platform. (@533Mhz I understand.) The single-shot test is obviously not conclusive but it’s actually quite an accurate result in my opinion.
As you can see, the iPhone 3GS beats the Droid. 12s for the iPhone 3GS and 20 seconds for the Droid.
For the record, three cleared-cache attempts here with the Archos Android tablet resulted in a 14s average. Pocketables tested the same site and got 10.9 seconds (with 12.4 for the iPhone 3GS.) Clearly location will make a difference (Bonn to San Jose is a long way!) but why is the Droid slower than both the iPhone 3GS and Archos Android Tablet?
The Archos Android Tablet uses the Ti OMAP 3440 which can run up to 800Mhz. 50% faster than the iPhone and Droid. That explains why the Archos device is faster. At like-for like CPU speeds though, the iPhone browser is simply a faster browser; probably as a result of its single-tasking OS.
Intel comparison.
Here are the non-cached figures from Firefox3.5 on XP, on Intel: (Tests done today from Bonn over Wifi)
- Menlow at 800Mhz (Flash disabled. Using Viliv S5 SSD): 12s, 9s, 10s (10.3 average)
- Menlow at 1.3Ghz: 10s, 7s, 8s (8.3 average)
- Netbook at 1.6Ghz (no Flash, SSD): 5s, 6s, 6s (5.6s average)
In this case, the Viliv at 800Mhz is slightly faster than the best test results from the iPhone 3GS and Archos Android Tablet but at the end of the day we’re looking at excellent browsing speeds across the board here that really should keep most people very happy indeed. I’m looking forward to re-visiting this subject with Moorestown and ARM multi-core Cortex A9 in 2010 though.
Source: Engadget.
October 29th, 2009 at 10:20 am
New article: Droid Browsing Speed Video. (And my comparison notes.) http://bit.ly/1opSOq
October 29th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Pls, can you tell us what is the N900 browser speed for the mentioned websites?
Chippy Reply:
October 29th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
I’m not able to test it right now but you can see an Engadget page load here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnfeTY5yPxk#t=7m31s
19 seconds although I was playing with the page as it loaded.
Gary Reply:
November 1st, 2009 at 9:08 am
Dont forget the N900 is also loading flash that, as we’ve seen, tends to slow down the device alot. I bet disabling flash will speed up the time to around the 10-12 second range (not loading the ads, flash vids on engadget).
October 29th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
the time gap is not justifiably by 50MHZ its either unfinished (which I think is the problem) or really slow OS.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
The Driod probably had 5-6 tasks running the background…. plus it has a 550 Mhz processor.
October 30th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
The browser on the Droid looks much better than what I’ve been putting up with on my Windows Mobile Device (Q9m).
A quick note on the video – the pages loaded ware slightly different. Where’s the box at the top right of the page on the iPhone? It looks like the iPhone was filtering elements from the page (reducing load times – which is no bad thing), but not apples to apples.
As a Verizon user who can upgrade their phone at any time, the Driod looks like my next Phone.