How much will the single-core processor of Nokia’s Lumia 800 affect real world speeds? Well judging from these browser speed tests that SlashGear ran against the top Android and iOS phones, it’s noticeably slower.
The Lumia 800 went up against the iPhone 4S and Galaxy S II in separate face-offs, loading a web page (in both its mobile and standard form) over a Wi-Fi connection. Obviously the different software each phone runs has to be taken into consideration, but in every test except one, the Lumia 800 was bested. That said, it was only slower by a few seconds, as opposed to 20 seconds or something. And considering it was up against phones with heavily optimised hardware and/or double the RAM, it performed pretty admirably.
So yes, the Lumia may not be a raw computing powerhouse, but if they’ve been able to tightly optimise their hardware around WP7 like Apple has done with their platform, those specs may not matter a whole lot. [SlashGear]
Matt
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 8:40 AMTesting over WiFi is stupid. The phone that connects firt will get a higher supply of the bandwidth.
MotorMouth
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 8:54 AMYou mean like in the real world? Yeah, why do a test that might actually reflect most people’s reality? It makes no sense at all.
Nads
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 9:01 AMWhat?
Wok
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 1:14 PMYou use two phones at once?
light487
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 9:35 AM@Matt: I agree. Considering network speed is not what these are testing, using wifi connecting at the same time would actually be biased towards whichever handset connected first. This test, as I understand it, relates to rendering times rather than networking speed.
MotorMouth
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 9:04 AMInteresting tests. Whilst the browser is measurably slower, what really stands out is how much better the Nokia’s screen looks than either the SGSII and iPhone. It completely blows them out of the water. The Nokia’s white leaps out of the screen where both th eothers look kinda grey and krappy. I think it also shows how much cooler looking the Nokia is, too.
Biderjum
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 9:24 AMI think the 4S has a matte screen protector(which I think are terrible) and brightness turned down
light487
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 9:39 AMMy SGSII has a matte screen protector and it certainly cuts down on reflections in a big way, which is the reason I got it, but it reduces visual clarity profoundly. When I first got the phone, the clarity was the ebst I’ve ever seen on a handset.. the moment I added the protector, I was shocked how much visual clarity it reduced.
MotorMouth
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 10:28 AMYou know you don’t need anything like that with gorilla glass, right? As I just posted on another topic, my Focus has been sitting in my pocket for 8 or 9 months now, without any cover or case, and there is not the tiniest mark on the screen. If a screen protector has the same effect on image quality as a bunch of scratches, why would you use it?
MotorMouth
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 10:31 AMThey mentioned the screen protector but I didn’t hear anything about the brightness being turned down. I can only assume you are unable to accept that the Retina Display is not really all that good. I’m afraid that it is definitely not in the same class as AMOLED and clearly Nokia’s AMOLED is a step up from Samsung’s technology, too. Why Apple stick with it when there are better technologies around, I don’t know.
Johnny P
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 9:17 AMNokia are back in the game with this phone and a good OS. I just wish the camera had a bigger lens like the N8 but thats my only real gripe. My gf already wants one in Pink
The Truth
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 9:59 AMRepost from Slashgear:
the Nokia phone actually beat the iphone 4s in the first test (loading the desktop version of slashgear). What almost everyone misses to notice is that the Safari browser gives an illustion that the page rendering is finished sooner but the truth is it is not as soon as it seems because if you look in the notification bar and find the “swirling icon” everytime a page loads, this icon stays there for another 5-8 seconds which means loading is not done yet. In this test, the Nokia N9 actually finished loading the page @ 1:49 but the “swirling icon” on the iphone did not disappear until 1:57. Just my 2cents.
The Truth
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 10:00 AMOoops, I meant the Nokia Lumia 800
brave
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 10:45 AMThis test was pathetic.
FJC
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 11:31 AMWhile these tests dont show true speed (due to what others have said already), it does give a good indication nonetheless, and GS2 and 4S should finish loading pages first anyway due to dual-core chips. But with the optimisation of WP devices, the difference isn’t much.
TSH
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 12:03 PMEven if the Nokia renders the page slower (and a few seconds out of a very small sample size isn’t a good indicator of that), a few seconds isn’t a big *performace* deficit. A deficit nonetheless, but not a deal-breaker IMHO.
Given that, I’m interested in the relative accuracy of the browsers. Are the pages, with all included elements, rendered *accurately*? I’m very interested to see how WP7.5′s IE measures up against iOS Safari and Android browser on that front.
MotorMouth
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 2:26 PMI have found it to be very good on that front. I can’t think of a single time it has not displayed a page properly (Flash content excepted). In fact, I’d say that it is probably better than Firefox on my PC, which occasionally has trouble rendering pages if they load too slowly.
Rohan
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 5:34 PMAnyone else realise about 45 seconds into the first vid, that they were tilting their head to the side at an almost 90 degree angle?
Kinda disorientating!
Either way, although IE9 Mobile may not be the best mobile browser, something about WP7 just sits nicely with me. I have to say, I really don’t like the screen size on the Lumia 800 though. Might go nuts and upgrade to a HTC Titan.