Android smartphones load web pages 52% faster than the iPhones

Android based smartphones perform better than the iPhones when it comes to loading web pages. Blaze.io, a mobile website optimization company, conducted the study that involved over 40,000 downloads of web pages belonging to the Fortune 1000 companies.

The study revealed that the iPhone loaded web pages 52% longer than Android and on average Android took 2.1 seconds to render non–mobile-optimized web pages, while the iPhone took 3.2 seconds. Android phones outdid the iPhone on site-loading time by 84% of the time.

During the study researchers used the Samsung Nexus S (Android 2.3), Samsung Galaxy S (Android 2.2), iPhone 4 (iOS 4.3) and iPhone 4 (iOS 4.2). The phones loaded pages using a strong Wi-Fi connection, and each device loaded each Fortune 1000 website three times.

Interestingly, during the study JavaScript improvements included in the last versions of Android and the iPhone had little effect on the speed of loading.

Besides, when loading pages of the websites created for mobile phones both operating systems showed almost the same speed of 2 seconds.

Blaze expressed its surprise with the results: “We assumed that similar hardware specs and the same WebKit foundation would make iPhone and Android’s browsers perform equally. We assumed that a faster JavaScript engine equals a faster browser. We assumed that 3G would be way slower than WiFi, even under good conditions.

“All of these assumptions have been proven wrong when we actually measured those scenarios. Without measuring, you don’t know when and where you need to optimize.”

Later Blaze reported that it is investigating whether the app they used to test page load times actually takes advantage of Apple’s Nitro JavaScript engine.

“We’re still investigating this issue, as the report was completed before it was made known. So far we’ve seen indications in both directions, so we can’t say for sure it’s being applied.

However, the results from measuring Android show that JavaScript only accounts for a small percentage of the total load time, about 15% on average. This implies that even if Nitro is not in use, it likely can only slightly narrow the gap.”

On the other hand, Apple declined the credibility of the tests.

“Blaze’s testing is flawed because it didn’t test the Safari web browser,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told Wired.com Thursday. “They were only testing their own proprietary web app that doesn’t take advantage of Safari’s web optimization.”