Windows Phone trounces iPhone 4, Android in browser benchmark test [video]

By on Apr 14, 2011 at 7:00 PM
mobile April 14, 2011

During Microsoft’s MIX conference in Las Vegas, Windows Phone director Joe Belfiore took the stage to demonstrate how well Microsoft’s new Internet Explorer 9 mobile browser can render HTML5 websites. He fired up a device running Microsoft’s new Windows Phone “Mango” update with IE9 installed and hardware acceleration, and then started an HTML5 speed test pitting the Mango device against the iPhone 4 and the Google Nexus S. Belfiore was so confident in the new browser that he gave the iPhone 4 a head start. Nonetheless, IE9 loaded the demo faster and came out on top, having displayed the test at 20 frames per second. It was followed by the Android browser on the Nexus S, which rendered the same demo at 11 frames per second, and then the iPhone 4 at 2 frames per second. This wasn’t exactly an independent test given that it was preformed by Microsoft and likely under optimal conditions, but we are definitely still impressed with what we’ve seen so far — let’s just hope the update to Mango goes a bit smoother than NoDo. Hit the jump for the video comparison.

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57 Comments

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  • Bringit

    Like a tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it

    • http://www.droiddoes.com/ Norm

      I heard it. I see the results differently. DROID wins because it is out now and will only get better because it’s so free and open.

      • Anonymous

        Your mommas twat is free and open

      • Romanh99

        lol to funny.

      • http://www.sk1wbw.wordpress.com Wayne Williams

        Oh no he didn’t!

      • http://evanjacobs.net/ Evan Jacobs

        Yes, so free and open that Google is not releasing codebases to AOSP. *Rolls eyes in your general direction*

      • Matthew

        Android is not free or open. That’s a myth associated with Android as an OS because of the entry cost being eliminated.

        Kind of like your phone doesn’t really cost $49 when you buy it for $49.

    • http://webhostingreview.info/forum-hosting/ smithon

      ha ha well said

  • http://twitter.com/inket inket

    if (OS == “Android”) maxFPS = 11;
    else if (OS == “iOS”) maxFPS = 2;
    else maxFPS = 60;

  • Anonymous

    So if I buy a Windows Phone today, wait until 2012 for the “fall” update, I’ll be ahead of iOS 4.3 and Android 2.3? Lovely.

    • Anonymous

      Agreed. It’s great that they are working on improving things, but so are the competitors.

    • Anonymous

      It’s worse than that, the browser test they chose clearly shows that iPhone running iOS 4.2. iOS 4.3 added the Nitro JavaScript engine.

      • Anonymous

        nah… Microsoft wouldn’t use a competitor’s lower performing prior shipping browser to compare against non-shipping-just-slightly-denser-than-vapor-ware.

        they wouldn’t do that.

      • Anonymous

        They really should have used the FireFox browser on Android and iOS. Oh, I forgot: “We have no plans to release the full Firefox browser for iOS. The iOS SDK agreement requires apps to use Apple’s own JavaScript engine…”

        Well, for Android anyway.

      • Anonymous

        Funny thing is turd. Beta browser mopped the floor with ios4.2.

    • Anonymous

      They actually used iOS 4.2 in the test.

  • QNX Please

    Soo what about RIM’s Webkit?

    • John

      LOL. funny post

    • Anonymous

      mmm

    • Anonymous

      The fastest blackberry runs at a 624mhz processor. You really think it has a shot against these 1gz phones?

      • KCRic

        Really, you pulled the processor card? The processor really has nothing to do with it. It doesn’t take a super processor to browse the internet, most of it has to do with the browser – just in case you’ve never noticed the difference between firefox or chrome vs. IE.

      • Matthew

        To be fair, it has something to do with it.

      • http://twitter.com/androidhelpers Android Helpers

        When’s the last time a processor hasn’t been a huge factor in browser speed? Oh right, never.

  • http://twitter.com/gnomehole The Gnome

    Show me something important beating something like iOS 5 and you have something.

    Show me a windows phone, which does little in the first place, doing anything and i’m zzzzzzzzz…. (oops, too late)

    • Jroc869

      omg steve jobs we know this is you, quit spewing your apple babble. dont you have some doctor appointments to get to.

      • OBJ_me

        Classy…

      • heyhey

        the man has cancer ……give em a break…that was low….

      • Matthew

        citation needed

      • KCRic

        That was low and just not classy – even if you don’t like Steve Jobs (which I don’t). I don’t like his business practices or the devices his company releases but, I also don’t like that he has pancreatic cancer which has a 100% fatality rate. You can’t cure it, remove it, or put it in ‘limbo’. It’s metastatic and always kills you, my girlfriends dad has it and it’s by no means a laughing matter.

        He is a great man and no matter what you think about Apple, his company single handedly brought the mobile industry out of a carrier/corporation rut that they refused to release us from prior to the original iPhone. He sparked a revolution and for that he should be respected if nothing else. You don’t have to like him but at the very least you should respect him and not be a limp d!ck Jroc869.

      • Anonymous

        Why do people like you always have to bring Steve Jobs into everything?

        Discuss the subject at hand and stop disrespecting someone who’s done you no wrong.

    • Anonymous

      iOS5? Show me iOS 5. You are saying “show me something I think is important beating an operating system that doesn’t exist yet.”

      Windows Mobile is going to be a very strong competitor with iOS, just like Android, and we will all be better off. When we have Google, Apple and Microsoft/Nokia competing, we win, We’ve gone from Monopoly to Duopoly to a competitive market in just a few years. I just hope RIM will get it’s act together before it is too late.

  • Anonymous

    It apparently is a hyper optimized test, as running the same page under desktop browsers show almost exactly the same result.

    Show me the browser opening a very long page with a huge discussion thread and I will be more impressed.

  • Dan

    Awesome! The next time I want to look at flipping letters, I’ll get a Windows phone. For real tasks, I’ll stick with my Android phone.

  • Anonymous

    Thing is, Apple hasn’t added hardware acceleration to Safari (desktop and mobile) and it will lag in these tests. I bet though that I will get a hardware accelerated version running on my iPhone 4 before WP7 users get this Mango update (in the fall)

    • Anonymous

      This site is filled with iturds.

  • http://www.vgchartz.com SuperChunk

    Nice demo, but we all know the others are about to release upgrades to their browsers as well.

    Important note though, Apple has always stated its preference for HTML5 vs say Flash, yet they perform so poorly, currently, in that regard. You’d think that if they were only focusing on this one tech it woudl perform better.

    • Anonymous

      Apple doesn’t perform better at anything. I challenge ANYONE to give me at least one!

    • Anonymous

      I am very suspicious of this test. I’d like to see BGR do an independent test of HTML5 rendering on the devices. Right now, Firefox has HTML5 demos that don’t run in Chrome and Google has HTML5 demos that don’t run in Firefox. This does prove that the browser is no joke, and that it does have a good JS engine. It also speaks volumes about Android, which made a good showing even though the example was probably biased towards Microsoft’s Trident engine.

      • Anonymous

        The test used is a specific test created by Microsoft to show off hardware acceleration. That is why IE does better than the other browsers. The other browsers do not utilize hardware acceleration… yet.

  • Anonymous

    No one else noticed the iPhone is running an outdated OS? 4.2 doesn’t have the Nitro JavaScript engine that 4.3+ has.

    • Anonymous

      its HTML5 Benchmark , not Javascript

  • http://twitter.com/networkbox Network Box

    This “speedread” test is hosted on Microsoft’s own site. On my quad-core Mac desktop I get 2 FPS on both Opera and Safari.

    So, they wrote a test specifically to run fast in their browser but slow in everyone elses?

    Let’s see it going to real websites, or third-party objective tests.

    “He who sets the questions gets to predict the answers”.

    • Anonymous

      did you run it with IE9 (in a parallels vm I would presume?)?

    • http://evanjacobs.net/ Evan Jacobs

      Why would they do that at a developer event? Of all people, they will notice if something is hacked. Microsoft isn’t stupid.

    • Anonymous

      I get excellent results on Chrome, regardless of the fact it’s MS’ test.
      FF performs worse, but hey, nothing new there.

  • Anonymous

    Even though the test seems biased. I would like to see microsoft bring their system to a quality level. More competition is a good thing for all mobile OS’s.

  • Anonymous

    I wonder if Apple and/or Google starts throwing nasty legal phrases around over this.

  • i told u so.com

    can everyone android or apple stop Fing crying smh. Bottom line android is and will always be overrated. As most test show WP7, and Webos will catch Android in 2 years, and Apple though not as sophisticated as Microsoft, or HP/Palm will continue to strive, but will always be behind in innovation to windows, and webos. Tired of hearing Android more isnt better, its all about quality I had a EVO for months, as well as a Palm Pre Plus, iphone 4, and a HTC Arrive now and will say the Palm Pre is by far the better OS, with the Arrive WP7 right behind it. Get your thumb out your A&& and wake up, Google needs to stick to searching not making phones period ANDROID BLOWS CHUNKS OF CHILLI REBARFED UP AND SWALLOWED F EM.

    • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR6HpRLyzMY Walter Sobchak

      Google doesn’t make phones.
      Idiot

  • Bugzy

    news at 11!!!

    some one month maybe not, even probably not real production hardware wins vs 4-6 months old hardware and almost a year old hardware.

  • heyhey

    i am feeling WP7

  • Kidheated

    Microsoft sucks. I don’t want another PC based device that has all the same problems. Taking on the Apple iphone 4 is one thing, but using an out of date android device is entirely another. If they pit there “mango” nonsense against a worthy competitor (like the LTE devices) they’d get crushed. “Mango” is a good start for Microsoft, but nothing more. It is too bad that all the other companies have been in this mobile game from the beginning and Microsoft is now just playing catch-up(because they now see a profit to be had). Wait for the next-gen android handsets to be releases this summer and fall, not to mention the iphone 5, Microsoft will shit its pants. Go home Microsoft. You’re not wanted here.

    • Anonymous

      it ALMOST sounds as if you have the slightest clue about what you’re saying.
      Oh wait, it doesn’t – you’re full of bullshit.

      Windows Phone 7 is *not* a PC based device at all. It’s designed from the ground up for mobile devices.

      Secondly, in this test the connection doesn’t matter: the download is very slim, but then it has to do a lot of HTML5 Canvas calculations. This test shows that WP7 is much, much faster at those. The internet connection becomes irrelevant from the second you see the animation.

      WP7 is an excellent choice, and could easily be the best choice depending on what someone is looking for.
      Besides, you SHOULD want them there: More competition, more pressure on Android and your precious Apple, so the harder they’ll work on updating their products.

    • Anonymous

      The Nexus S is out of date? It’s currently available and will still be released on Sprint.

      The great thing about these test is you can take it yourself. If people are concerned about the demo not representing the most modern iOS version (or greatest Android hardware), go with a newer version of iOS and try the test out.

      Also cool to see they used a jailbroken iPhone with custom lock screen.

  • Anonymous

    Unsurprising results. Microsoft can actually write good clean code whereas Android is just a freebie mess and everyone knows that CrApple can’t write code to save their lives.

    Go Microsoft. You get what yo pay for and Android is worth every penny.

  • Anonymous

    Hyper-optimization isn’t going to win you marketshare here MS. Phones do not need blazingly fast browsers, just good enough. Your tests are not real-world sites where sites rather go Flash than fancy HTML/CSS. The whole ball of wax is what you should be working on.

    If there was a need to hyper-accelerate Google would prioritize it, but it’s optimizing the pea next to the watermelon at this point.

  • Anonymous

    Not surprised. I have a Samsung Focus without any updates, and I feel like IE performs much better than Safari or Dolphin. In fact, the two things I was most surprised by on Windows Phone 7 was the browsing experience and the long battery life.

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