The iPhone web browser speed test knocks the competition out of the water. The statistics of the tests were rather astonishing. Medialets ran the SunSpider test suite with Safari 4.0.1 on a 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo White MacBook (the baseline for comparisons), Mobile Safari on the iPhone 3G with iPhone OS v2.2.1, Mobile Safari on the iPhone 3G with iPhone OS v3.0, Mobile Safari on the iPhone 3GS with iPhone OS v3.0, the “Browser” app on the T-Mobile G1 with Android OS v1.5 (Cupcake) and the “Web” app on the Palm Pre with Web OS v1.0.2.
iPhone OS 3.0 on the same iPhone 3G yields nearly 3X the JavaScript performance in Mobile Safari vs. using iPhone OS 2.2.1. Which should make everyone who has not bought a 3GS very happy. The iPhone 3GS steps up another factor of 3, bringing JavaScript performance on the iPhone 3GS to 12X that of a desktop machine that has well over four times the raw processing power.
The T-Mobile G1 running the “Cupcake” version of the Android OS finished the test suite in about 91 seconds. It is about a third faster than the iPhone 3G running Apple’s OS (2.2.1). The Palm Pre had speeds that closely rival the iPhone 3G running Apple’s OS 3.0.