Skip to main content

Android beats iPhone 4 in web test (that may be totally wrong)

chrome-vs-safari-browser-Android-iPhone-4A study by web optimization company Blaze shows that websites load 52 percent faster when using phones with Google’s Android 2.3 operating system than Apple’s iPhone 4 loaded with iOS 4.3. Both of the latest updates for Android and iOS focused on improvements to their JavaScript engines and faster browsing.

Good news for Android, right? Not necessarily. It’s possible that the Blaze’s entire test is entirely flawed.

Recommended Videos

First, the test: Blaze conducted what it calls the “largest ever research study of smart phone browser performance,” carried out in order to “measure the true mobile browsing experience.” That included 45,000 page loads of websites of Fortune 1000 companies using a Nexus S and an iPhone 4. Blaze analyzed the results to discover that Android loaded websites a “whopping” 52 percent faster on average than the iPhone 4.

According to the study, Android 2.3 had a median load time of 2.144 seconds, compared to iOS 4.3’s median load time of 3.254 seconds. For websites optimized for mobile devices, Android was only 3 percent faster. But for non-mobile websites, Android clocked in at 59 percent faster than the iPhone.

“”We were very surprised by the results,” said Blaze CTO and co-founder Guy Podjarny, “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.”

The problem with Blaze’s test, says The Loop‘s Jim Dalrymple, is that “the study is flawed.”

In the Blaze study, the speed measurement “was done using the custom apps which use the platform’s embedded browser. This means WebView (based on Chrome) for Android, and UIWebView (based on Safari) for iPhone.”

Unfortunately for Android, the UIWebView didn’t actually receive any of the performance-enhancing updates in the 4.3 upgrade that the Safari browser did receive. That means the browser Blaze used in the test didn’t have any of the JavaScript speed improvements.

“Obviously someone is looking to make a mountain out of a molehill,” analyst Michael Gartenberg tells The Loop. “It’s not an apples to apples test.”

So is Android 2.3 really faster than iPhone 4.3? Maybe — but this test shouldn’t be the final word on the matter.

Update: Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller has issued a statement to Ars Technica about the test, which essentially echos The Loop‘s Dalrymple and analyst Gartenberg. It reads: “Their testing is flawed because they didn’t actually test the Safari web browser on the iPhone. Instead they only tested their own proprietary app which uses an embedded web viewer that doesn’t take advantage of Safari’s web performance optimizations. Despite this fundamental testing flaw, they still only found an average of a second difference in loading web pages.”

Andrew Couts
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Features Editor for Digital Trends, Andrew Couts covers a wide swath of consumer technology topics, with particular focus on…
The iPhone 18 Pro could see a major design change
A person holding the Apple iPhone 16e showing the screen.

If the iPhone 18 release schedule wasn't enough of a shift, it looks like the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max models could switch to under-screen Face ID and have only a small camera in the top-left corner of the screen. The news comes from Digital Chat Station on Weibo, a leaker with an inside hook into Apple's supply chain.

"Well, I checked with the Apple supply chain a few days ago. The iPhone 18/18 Pro Max is indeed testing 3D faces under the screen, with a single HIAA hole; the iPhone 8/18 Air is a regular 2+1 hole," they write (as translated by Google.)

Read more
The iPhone 17 Air might not stack up in terms of battery life
Alleged concept render of the iPhone 17 Air in black.

Concerns over iPhone 17 Air battery life might have been spot-on, according to a new report from The Information. Apple allegedly conducted internal tests that showed only 60 to 70 percent of iPhone 17 Air devices would make it through the day without needing a recharge, versus between 80 to 90 percent for other iPhone models.

Of course, part of that is due to the design of the handset. At just 5.5mm, the iPhone 17 Air is set to be the thinnest iPhone ever (and one of the thinnest phones on the market overall), but it might come at the cost of battery capacity. To help offset this problem, Apple is supposedly planning to launch an optional battery case accessory to give users a little bit more juice to get them through the day.

Read more
Apple could finally fix Siri on iPhones with help from Google’s Gemini
Gemini Live on an iPhone.

“Find me a decent coffee shop where I can sit and get work done?” I uttered into my iPhone’s mic. 

“I’ll need to use ChatGPT to write that.” That was Siri’s response in my interaction with Apple’s voice assistant just over a week ago. Google’s Gemini assistant helped me the way I expected it to. 

Read more