Is Puffin Browser really the best for Android???
Ok guys, this is not much of a quantitative research but I was curious so I did a lil experiment: Feel free to critique and add info where needed......
I basically ran some online browser benches. Here are the parameters under which I ran the tests:
1. Killed all internet intensive apps (to make sure nothing hogs the internet)
2. Open each browser and kill each after each tests (to prevent hogging of any resource whether internet, cpu or gpu)
3. Make sure the browsers are all on default settings, as installed from Play store (so as not to give one advantage over the other though any form of tweaking)
EQUIPMENT USED:
* SGS3 T999- with specs as in sig.
* The most popular browsers that clam to be faster than all the others e.g Super Browser, Firefox, Opera, Puffin Browser, Circle Browser, Chrome, Dolphin HD, UC Browser, stock Browser etc...
*D-Link Wifi router with 1MB internet connection (wifi speed 65mbps)
*Speed Test (registering dload speed of 12930kbps, upload speed of 1325kbps and a ping of 41ms)
*Sun Spider Browser Benchmark ( a benchmark that runs java script in your browser to register performance, the less time the browser takes to run the script, the better the performance)
*Peacekeepers Futuremark Browser Benchmark (a benchmark that runs various HTML scripts and media to register performance, the higher the score the better the performance)
FINDINGS:
Ok so I ran the speed benches and here are the results: I have selected the 3 best browser performances so as not to draw this thing out because I test alot of browsers-
SUN SPIDER Results:
Puffin Browser
Puffin Browser posted 246.4ms on the result sheet, which was the lowest score of all the browsers and clears a 1358.6ms difference between the 2nd lowest result.
Opera Mobile Browser
Opera Mobile Browser posted 1605.0ms on the result sheet, which was the 2nd lowest score of all the other browsers and clears just 31.3ms difference between the 3rd lowest result.
Boat Browser
Boat Browser posted 1636.3ms on the result sheet, which was the 3rd lowest score of all the other browsers.
PEACEKEEPER FUTUREMARK Results:
Puffin Browser
Puffin Browser registered a whopping 1729 with 2/7 HTML5 capabilities, which was the highest score of all the browsers (it was registered as a Chrome browsers maybe because Peacekeeper detected the Webkit engine used in chrome browser), it clears a 1248 difference between the 2nd highest score by the Android Stock Browser.
Android Stock Browser
Android Stock Browser registered 481 with 1/7 HTML5 capabilities, which was the 2nd highest score of all the other browsers (it was registered as a Safari browser maybe because Peacekeeper detected the Apple Webkit engine used in Safari browser), it clears a difference of only 3 from the 3rd highest scoring browser, which is the Lunascape browser (really a marginal difference).
Lunascape Browser
Lunascape Browser registered 478 with 1/7 HTML5 capabilities, which was the 3rd highest score of all the other browsers.
CONCLUSION:
I would consider Puffin Browser to be the fastest of all the other browsers that I tested but I am a bit skeptical about it being the best at displaying/ rendering dynamically rich multimedia sites. It might be extremely fast at rendering simple sites such as say TechJamaica forum but not particularly better at rendering sites like MTv or YouTube videos. I say this because while running the Peacekeeper bench. I realized that of all the top 5 browsers that I ran the test with only Opera actually ran atleast 3 of the HTML videos in the various file formats during the test, the other top 4 browsers just jsut display a black spot where the video should be displayed and skipped the video. The top 5 browsers with the exception of Opera displayed the ripple effect without it getting distorted and turning into monochrome display. However, firefox and UC Browser displayed the HTML5 videos that Opera displayed (and the others didn't) more crisper and clearer than Opera browser did and also displayed the ripple effect correctly. Te reason why I'm concern about the accuracy of the Peacekeeper test is that only Puffin and Opera browser got 2/7 HTML5 capabilities when Firefox and UC Browser did the same thing and even better and got only 1/7....... My final conclusion is that Puffin is the best for rendering pages such as Google search engine, forums, and java rich sites while Firefox and UC Browser is the best for rendering sites like MTv, NBC and HTML rich sites as they display the videos the best and does the same in real world senarios, as with Youtube videos that they start palying over wifi under 2seconds from start to finish without buffering and with high quality.
Any thoughts?
LAPTOP:- Alienware M11x C2D @1.7GHz, SATA 300GB HDD, nVidia GT 335M 1GB (dis.), Intel GMA HD-64MB (int.), 2GB DDR3 RAM @1066MHz, 1.3MP webcam Running Windows7 64bit
MOBILE DEVICE:- SGS3 T999 dual core Qualcom Snapdragon @1.5GHz, 2GB RAM, 16GB (int. SD), Adreno 225 GPU, 8MP pri. cam, 1.9MP ff running Stock:4.0.4 UVLH2 modem