45,000 tests prove Android surfs faster than the iPhone

A recent study performed by Ottowa-based Blaze Software reveals that Android’s mobile Web browser is significantly faster than the mobile Safari browser found on Apple’s iPhone. Blaze performed 45,000 separate tests using 1,000 different websites along with its mobile measurement service, and found that Android was 52% faster on average. The firm utilized the latest Android devices running Android 2.2 and Android 2.3 in the tests, and pitted them against iPhone 4 handsets running both iOS 4.2 and iOS 4.3. “We were very surprised by the results,” said Blaze CTO and Co-founder Guy Podjarnyin a statement. “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.” Hit the break for the full press release.

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/blog

For more information on the Mobile measurement service
Blaze’s mobile measurement service can be found at: www.blaze.io/mobile

About 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