Face Off: Chrome vs. Safari for iOS
Face Off: Chrome vs. Safari for iOS
You might have heard that Google's new Chrome browser for iOS is a heck of a lot slower than the desktop and Android versions everyone loves. Speed tests posted around the Internet weren't kind to Chrome, and Google even issued a statement blaming "platform specific technical specifications" for the perceived lethargy, a clear shot at Apple's refusal to give developers access to Safari's super-fast Nitro JavaScript engine.
Just to be thorough, we ran our own tests. Chrome is first.
BrowserMark
(Rendering; higher is better)
New iPad
Chrome: 43897
Safari: 50625
iPhone
Chrome: 47538
Safari: 96825
Speed Test
(Latency; higher is better)
New iPad
Chrome: 24573
Safari: 29362
iPhone 4
Chrome: 8182
Safari: 18171
SunSpider
(JavaScript; lower is better)
New iPad
Chrome: 7376.6
Safari: 1781.6
iPhone 4
Chrome: 13196.8
Safari: 3856.3
So, yeah. Safari certainly tests better. Significantly better in the all-important JavaScript. But that doesn't tell the whole story. We knew Safari was going to perform better using these sorts of tests; it's literally built to.
But the only true assessment of a browser's usefulness, of course, is how fast it loads the sites we visit every day, and in our much-less-scientific matchups, Chrome performed admirably. Safari won most battles (the content-rich New York Times website loaded about a second quicker, but this site actually loaded a couple of ticks faster with Chrome), but none of the contests were decided by more than a few seconds. And once cached, the difference was mostly imperceptible.
But still, Apple has placed a big hurdle in the way of Chrome's iOS popularity--not so much with speed restrictions, but rather in its lack of default browser choice. Chrome already offers some of the main features Apple touted in iOS 6--iCloud tabs, unified search/address bar--and a few we'd like to see (namely, tab management and easy "incognito" browsing), and its clean, minimalist look plays particularly well on our iOS devices.
We need to spend a little more time with it, but based on our first impressions, we'd be more than happy to wait an extra second or two for our Tweetbot links to open in Chrome--if only Apple would let us.
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