Browser Speed Tests: iPhone's Mobile Safari vs. Opera Mini

From: http://lifehacker.com/

This morning Apple surprised everyone by approving the Opera Mini web browser for the iPhone and iPod touch, bringing one of the most popular mobile browsers to the most popular smartphone. So how does it stack up?

First of all, it's worth pointing out that Opera Mini has one big roadblock for iPhone and iPod touch users: Apple doesn't allow you to set any other application as the default for web browsing, so if you're opening links from other applications, like Mail, you'll still launch Mobile Safari when you click that link. (To use Opera Mini, you'd have to copy the link, close Mail, open Opera Mini, and paste the link.) That's a pretty big hurdle, but it's not the end of the world, especially since more and more apps display links in-app unless you explicitly choose to open a link in Safari. All that aside, you probably still open Safari directly when you want to do a lot of basic web browsing, so nothing's standing in the way of just launching Opera Mini in those instances instead.

So let's talk speed and performance. I don't have all the same options for testing these as we have when we do our normal browser performance tests (most notably, memory use is missing, but since multitasking isn't on the iPhone yet anyway, that doesn't much matter), but we'll try to tackle as many of the same tests as we can. (Also like our other performance tests, these aren't exactly scientific, but we do follow our own set of guidelines to get as accurate of results as we can on limited equipment. For these tests, I'm using my iPhone 3G.)

Browser Boot Up/Load Time; Split Decision... Probably Mobile Safari

This is a little bit of a tricky category. What I found when pitting the two against each other in launch time is that, while the Mobile Safari took significantly longer to launch from a cold start—that is, after having rebooted my iPhone entirely—it apparently resides in the iPhone's system memory from that point forward, meaning subsequent launches are nearly instantaneous. Opera, on the other hand, had a better cold startup time, but it doesn't have the benefit of sitting in the system memory, so every launch for Opera Mini is a "cold" launch.

Page Load Time; Winner: Opera Mini

To measure page load times, I timed five or so page loads on several popular sites over Wi-Fi, threw out the highest and lowest for each site, and then averaged them all out. In this category, Opera Mini absolutely pummeled Mobile Safari, especially on full versions of web sites like the New York Times front page (which partially rendered in Mobile Safari before it finished loading, but continued loading for over 40 seconds time and again).

JavaScript, DOM, CSS Speed; Winner: Mobile Safari

We used Mozilla's very cool Dramaeo browser performance testing tool to pit Mobile Safari's JavaScript, DOM, and CSS chops against Opera Mini's. Unfortunately, we learned pretty quickly that, while Mobile Safari slowly chugged through the test (slowly compared to desktop browsers, that is), Opera Mini failed to run with any of them.

That's not necessarily a huge black mark against the speed of Opera Mini, per se, since we couldn't actually pit the two against each other, but it speaks pretty loudly about which browser is currently capable of offering a more desktop-like experience, and that's Mobile Safari.

Keep in mind that we're not saying that a more desktop-like experience is necessarily preferable; you're on a mobile device, after all, and that desktop performance does seem to come with some trade-offs—like the page load times mentioned above.

Takeaway

It's pretty clear that, while Opera Mini features seriously impressive page load times, it's still behind Mobile Safari on several levels—some of its disadvantages are due to Safari's advantaged position as the system default, some of them probably have more to do with the youth of Opera Mini on the iPhone platform. You will, however, notice the considerably faster page loads when you're using Opera Mini, and with the web, speed is everything. If Opera could keep the speed and fix some of the rough edges, it could be really impressive.

Speed aside, use Opera Mini for a while and you'll quickly miss the smooth zooming of Mobile Safari and the nice font rendering. (When you're looking at a desktop version of a site zoomed all the way out on Opera Mini, the type renders as big blocks of color and is generally unreadable.)

(Click the image above for a closer look.)

Still, I'm holding out hope for Opera Mini. The speedy page loads alone make it an ideal browser for a quick lookup, and its tabbed browsing interface is, in my opinion, superior to Mobile Safari's.

If you've been kicking the tires on Opera Mini since its release this morning, let's hear how its measuring up for you in the comments.

Send an email to Adam Pash, the author of this post, at tips+adam@lifehacker.com.

Screenshot Tour: A Hands On Look at Safari 4's Eye Candy

If Apple knows how to do anything, it's take tech you've already seen and make it flashier and more fun to use. The new Safari 4 public beta is no exception.

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Apple Announces Safari 4 - The World's Fastest & Most Innovative Browser

New Nitro Engine Runs JavaScript More Than Four Times Faster

CUPERTINO, Calif., Feb. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Apple® today announced the public beta of Safari® 4, the world's fastest and most innovative web browser for Mac® and Windows PCs. The Nitro engine in Safari 4 runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3.* Innovative new features that make browsing more intuitive and enjoyable include Top Sites, for a stunning visual preview of frequently visited pages; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; Cover Flow®, to easily flip through web history or bookmarks; and Tabs on Top, to make tabbed browsing easier and more intuitive.

"Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Safari 4 is the fastest and most efficient browser for Mac and Windows, with great integration of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards that enables the next generation of interactive web applications."

Safari 4 is built on the world's most advanced browser technologies including the new Nitro JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than IE 7 and more than three times faster than Firefox 3. Safari quickly loads HTML web pages three times faster than IE 7 and almost three times faster than Firefox 3.*

Apple is leading the industry in defining and implementing innovative web standards such as HTML 5 and CSS 3 for an entirely new class of web applications that feature rich media, graphics and fonts. Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies so web-based applications can store information locally without an Internet connection, and is the first browser to support advanced CSS Effects that enable highly polished web graphics using reflections, gradients and precision masks. Safari 4 is the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project's Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG web standards that are specifically designed for dynamic web applications.

Safari for Mac, Windows, iPhone(TM) and iPod® touch are all built on Apple's WebKit, the world's fastest and most advanced browser engine. Apple developed WebKit as an open source project to create the world's best browser engine and to advance the adoption of modern web standards. Most recently, WebKit led the introduction of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards and is known for its fast, modern code-base. The industry's newest browsers are based on WebKit including Google Chrome, the Google Android browser, the Nokia Series 60 browser and Palm webOS.

    Innovative new features in Safari 4 include:
  -- Top Sites, a display of frequently visited pages in a stunning wall of
     previews so users can jump to their favorite sites with a single click;
  -- Full History Search, where users search through titles, web addresses
     and the complete text of recently viewed pages to easily return to
     sites they've seen before;
  -- Cover Flow, to make searching web history or bookmarks as fun and easy
     as paging through album art in iTunes®;
  -- Tabs on Top, for better tabbed browsing with easy drag-and-drop tab
     management tools and an intuitive button for opening new ones;
  -- Smart Address Field, that automatically completes web addresses by
     displaying an easy-to-read list of suggestions from Top Sites,
     bookmarks and browsing history;
  -- Smart Search Field, where users fine-tune searches with recommendations
     from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches;
  -- Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the
     quality of the site's layout and text;
  -- built-in web developer tools to debug, tweak and optimize a website for
     peak performance and compatibility; and
  -- a new Windows-native look in Safari for Windows, that uses standard
     Windows font rendering and native title bar, borders and toolbars so
     Safari fits the look and feel of other Windows XP and Windows Vista
     applications.

Pricing & Availability

Safari 4 is a public beta for both Mac OS® X and Windows and is available immediately as a free download at http://www.apple.com/safari.

Safari 4 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard® version 10.5.6 and Security Update 2009-001 or Mac OS X Tiger® version 10.4.11, a minimum 256MB of memory, and is designed to run on any Intel-based Mac or a Mac with a PowerPC G5, G4 or G3 processor and built-in FireWire®. Safari 4 for Windows requires Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista, a minimum 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor. Full system requirements and more information on Safari 4 can be found at http://www.apple.com/safari.

    * Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection
    and other factors. All testing conducted on an iMac® 2.8 GHz Intel
    Core 2 Duo system running Windows Vista, with 2GB of RAM. JavaScript
    benchmark based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test. HTML
    benchmark based on VeriTest's iBench Version 5.0 using default settings.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award- winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

© 2009 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, Safari, Cover Flow, iPhone, iPod, iTunes, Leopard, Tiger, FireWire and iMac are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.