About the infamous browser speed comparison...

[Hlorri]

Steve the showman surely knows how to exploit real or perceived differences to his benefit (and for that alone he does deserve quite a bit of credit); but occasionally, the tidbits coming out of the Reality Distortion Field (RDF) do have a grain of substance to them.

When he presented the iPhone 3G next to the N95 in his keynote, he did point out that the former (supposedly) will load www.nationalgeographic.com in 21 seconds, vs. 34 seconds in the N95. I can confirm the latter, my N95-4 did take between 30-37 seconds in repeated experiments, using the built-in S60 browser. This is despite the N95 having 3.5G (HSDPA) support, vs. "plain" 3G (UMTS) in the iPhone 3G.

However:

• Opera Mini on the N95 loads the page in 9 seconds! Also, it presents the page more to Steve's liking, initially as a miniaturized snapshot, in which you zoom into your region of liking.
  
  Granted: This is cheating, since Opera Mini works by way of a proxy server (in Norway), and sends only "optimized content" to your phone; but then again, Steve's comparison was precisely web browsing experience, not download speed. After all, this is a comparison that the iPhone would also lose, given the absence of HSxPA. Plus, on the iPhone you cannot run just any third party application (none as of yet), and in particular, no 3rd party web browsers.
  
  
• Tethering the N95 with a bluetooth-enabled MacBook Pro and using the Safari, Camino and Firefox browsers, the same page does load in 10-14 seconds. (No proxy servers involved here).

Which all brings to light the fundamental weakness that Steve is exploiting here: The mediocre performance of the S60 (WebKit) based browser.

Does this jive with everyone's experience? Do other S60 phones have better "native" browsers? Any tips/tricks to improve the performance of the default one?

[Sir_Q]

My bet is the average user would stick with default browsers.

[mirunit]

I would honestly say that it is the difference in processor performance between the two. The iPhone is clocked higher than the N95 I believe.

[RogerPodacter]

if you change your n95 browser and turn off javascript, you will load nationalgeographic in 20 seconds flat. i tried it multiple times, try it out. that about evens the playing field for me.

[Gorgonesh]

iPhone supports HSDPA, not just UMTS so they should be comparable in throughput depending on the network.

Roger, did you disable javascript? or Flash? I would be surprised if the iPhone didn't support Javascript.

[coomac]

Iphone supports javascript, but not flash. As was demonstrated in the other thread about this, the N95 loads that site in ~21 seconds if flash is disabled. What Steve really showed was that the iphone offers an abbreviated web browsing experience and the 412 MHz clock speed makes little difference as far as the browser is concerned.

[JNGold]

This is despite the N95 having 3.5G (HSDPA) support, vs. "plain" 3G (UMTS) in the iPhone 3G.

The iPhone 3G uses HSDPA.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/wireless.html

[Rcadden]

if you change your n95 browser and turn off javascript, you will load nationalgeographic in 20 seconds flat. i tried it multiple times, try it out. that about evens the playing field for me.

I'll gladly wait another 10-14 seconds to be able to experience the *real* internet, thank you very much.

[Konceptz]

I'll gladly wait another 10-14 seconds to be able to experience the *real* internet, thank you very much.

Not even. The page loads at almost the same speed, the flash is buffered and starts working right away. Flash is, after all, a streaming media source.

On another note, I can't wait to see what will happen to the Iphone speed when people load 20-50 apps.

[Rcadden]

On another note, I can't wait to see what will happen to the Iphone speed when people load 20-50 apps.

Nothing. That's why they declared multitasking 'silly', and went with the inane server-based ping interruption system. You'll only ever have one app running at any given time, so it won't be slow at all. At least that's how I understand it.

The downside is that

1. you have to be connected to the network to 'multitask'
2. you'll have the potential to be CONSTANTLY interrupted. If you've used an iPhone, you'll know that, for example, an incoming SMS puts a big box in the middle of whatever you're doing, which, according to Apple, makes it 'convenient' to interact with that message. But what if you don't want to interact with it? How many times are you browsing or doing something else, and you don't really care wtf SMS you've just gotten? Too bad.

Now, picture that SMS coming from any one of your applications. Have a headache, don't ya?

[sr1329]

Steve the showman surely knows how to exploit real or perceived differences to his benefit (and for that alone he does deserve quite a bit of credit); but occasionally, the tidbits coming out of the Reality Distortion Field (RDF) do have a grain of substance to them.

When he presented the iPhone 3G next to the N95 in his keynote, he did point out that the former (supposedly) will load www.nationalgeographic.com in 21 seconds, vs. 34 seconds in the N95. I can confirm the latter, my N95-4 did take between 30-37 seconds in repeated experiments, using the built-in S60 browser. This is despite the N95 having 3.5G (HSDPA) support, vs. "plain" 3G (UMTS) in the iPhone 3G.

However:

• Opera Mini on the N95 loads the page in 9 seconds! Also, it presents the page more to Steve's liking, initially as a miniaturized snapshot, in which you zoom into your region of liking.
  
  Granted: This is cheating, since Opera Mini works by way of a proxy server (in Norway), and sends only "optimized content" to your phone; but then again, Steve's comparison was precisely web browsing experience, not download speed. After all, this is a comparison that the iPhone would also lose, given the absence of HSxPA. Plus, on the iPhone you cannot run just any third party application (none as of yet), and in particular, no 3rd party web browsers.
  
  
• Tethering the N95 with a bluetooth-enabled MacBook Pro and using the Safari, Camino and Firefox browsers, the same page does load in 10-14 seconds. (No proxy servers involved here).

Which all brings to light the fundamental weakness that Steve is exploiting here: The mediocre performance of the S60 (WebKit) based browser.

Does this jive with everyone's experience? Do other S60 phones have better "native" browsers? Any tips/tricks to improve the performance of the default one?

It's been established that Steve is an *** hole. The N95 browser downloads and renders Flash on that page. Disable Flash and do the comparison.

[sr1329]

Nothing. That's why they declared multitasking 'silly', and went with the inane server-based ping interruption system. You'll only ever have one app running at any given time, so it won't be slow at all. At least that's how I understand it.

The downside is that

1. you have to be connected to the network to 'multitask'
2. you'll have the potential to be CONSTANTLY interrupted. If you've used an iPhone, you'll know that, for example, an incoming SMS puts a big box in the middle of whatever you're doing, which, according to Apple, makes it 'convenient' to interact with that message. But what if you don't want to interact with it? How many times are you browsing or doing something else, and you don't really care wtf SMS you've just gotten? Too bad.

Now, picture that SMS coming from any one of your applications. Have a headache, don't ya?

iPhone users think it's cool that the content of their SMS shows on the home screen. Nokia, on the other hand which has been doing phones for years knows better. They know better than to reveal the person and the message right on the home screen for privacy reasons. I don't want everything popping up on my home screen for the world to see. I know they made a conscious decision to make it so that the user has to click on the notification to see message content.

[friedbrains]

on web page browsing, it does matter that the iphone has a bigger screen and has a touch screen, that is given... but does a couple of sec really that matters much??? browsing experience varies in speed all the time...

[lightningjohn]

Did anyone else not notice that the iPhone displayed that leopard(I think) but on the N95, flash is required for that section to be displayed.

iPhone 3G is getting flash?

[sr1329]

on web page browsing, it does matter that the iphone has a bigger screen and has a touch screen, that is given... but does a couple of sec really that matters much??? browsing experience varies in speed all the time...

A few seconds is no big deal but 13 seconds is a lot. But at least I have the option of full Flash content and if I want faster browsing, I can turn off Flash. I have options, that the iPhone user will not have. That comparison is a straight up lie. He even doctored the screenshot to remove the "this page requires Flash download it from here" dialog. He sucks ccks for a living.