What we’ve got here are two rather different phones and three sort of similar browsers, the phones running on two rather different carriers and the browsers whose creators would all hope to gain your attention long enough to browse the internet with their application over the competition. What we’re using to test out the browsers in question, the newest of which, Firefox 4, was just released today, is a JavaScript Benchmark by the name of SunSpider. It’s a sweet test that can test everyone equally.

What SunSpider does is to test the core JavaScript language of each browser only, not the DOM or any other browser API. SunSpider runs test that “mostly represent real performance problems that developers have encountered,” tests run include JSON input, a 3D raytracer, cryptography tests, and code decompression. SunSpider notes that they balance their tests between different areas of language and different types of code, and runs each test multiple times to determine an error range which they say is technically inside a 95% confidence level. That’s hot!

What this all boils down to is that once the test is run once, it’s already been run several times, and the faster it goes (the smaller the number,) the better your browser performed. What we found in the tests run today is that Firefox is the winner on both phones when compared to the stock browser on both phones and popular DolphinHD browser by a significant margin.

Take a peek at our tests below:

ATRIX 4G (running on AT&T’s HSPA+ network)

DolphinHD : 3841.5ms

Stock Browser : 4241.5ms

Firefox 4 : 1842.2ms

HTC ThunderBolt (running on Verizon’s 4G LTE network)

DolphinHD : 4388.1ms

Stock Browser : 5977.8ms

Firefox 4 : 2685.9ms

Look good to you? Now we need Safari to enter the game, then Internet Explorer, which I hear they still make! Then Netscape! Actually I think we’ve already probably have the clear winner here in the bunch.

What do you think?

10 COMMENTS

  1. What it shows is that this test says nothing whatsoever about the actual performance in use. At least on my phone (and many others if I read the feedback on forums) it sucks compared to other browsers. I guess there’s more to a browser than javascript. (Galaxy S Froyo)

    • Firefox was unable to run much at all on my OG Droid, and I expect the same of the first and second wave of Android devices, your Galaxy S included.

      The Thunderbolt is the second fastest Android smartphone on the market, trailing the ATRIX, and these two juggernauts seem to run Firefox just fine (my T-Bolt does, at least). I think we’ll see more people using Firefox over stock/Dolphin in the coming months once the Droid Bionic/X2/Inc 2, EVO 3D, Pyramid, etc, are out and in people’s hands.

      • The processor on the thunderbolt is pretty much the same as the one on the mytouch 4g and tmobile g2. So i would not necessarily call it the second fastest android device out there. When it comes to data speeds that’s a different story though 🙂

    • Firefox was unable to run much at all on my OG Droid, and I expect the same of the first and second wave of Android devices, your Galaxy S included.

      The Thunderbolt is the second fastest Android smartphone on the market, trailing the ATRIX, and these two juggernauts seem to run Firefox just fine (my T-Bolt does, at least). I think we’ll see more people using Firefox over stock/Dolphin in the coming months once the Droid Bionic/X2/Inc 2, EVO 3D, Pyramid, etc, are out and in people’s hands.

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