Touch web browser mega shootout: Surf's up

Overview

You know what they say about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. While the table gives information about the different parts of browsing, it doesn’t tell the whole story. So, for each of the browsers we tested, we’ll give a short overview of the general experience.

Mobile Safari on iPhone 3GS (and 3G)

On paper, it looks like Opera Mobile 9.7 beats the iPhone’s Mobile Safari but… well… the table doesn’t tell the whole story.

Mobile Safari lacks things like text reflow, a download manager and saving pages for offline viewing. But it is the browser that defines usability in today’s handheld browsers.

Most browsers have already copied the kinetic scrolling and some are even doing the pinch zoom too. Mobile Safari can handle multiple pages trouble-free and its speed is off the chart. Running on the iPhone 3GS, it topped the JavaScript benchmark but unfortunately the iPHone 3G scored exactly half the 3GS points.

Mobile Safari on iPhone 3GS

At loading pages, the 3GS also ranked second only to Opera Mini while the 3G with its slower CPU lagged behind.

The biggest blotch (seemingly) on the iPhone’s resume is the lack of Flash support. On the other hand YouTube works like a charm with the preinstalled YouTube client and that’s all the Flash support most phones get anyway. Unfortunately, videos from other Flash websites and Flash games are certainly a no-go.

Nokia N900 might have been the pioneer of full Flash support but more are following (Hero and Nexus One are the first names that spring to mind) and the Safari risks lagging behind on that one.

Mr. Jobs is not keen on letting full Flash on the iPhone and until that changes, Flash is just another thing the iPhone won’t get. And since the Apple tablet – the iPad also lacks any kind of Flash support you are strongly advised not to hold your breath just yet.

MicroB browser on Nokia N900

If you’re reading this in Firefox, then you’re seeing what Nokia N900 users see. The Maemo browser uses the same rendering engine as Firefox, so pages look the same. For now, it has Flash 9.4 so you get the full Flash experience – no Flash Lite will-it-it-work guesswork.

“For now” means there’s a Flash 10.1 update coming up – you know, the one with hardware acceleration. If you need to use web sites that are heavy on Flash, the Nokia N900 simply has no alternative at this point.

MicroB on Nokia N900

The ability to view multiple pages goes without saying but perhaps the killer feature of the Maemo Browser (oh well, besides full Flash support, the excellent rendering and all…) is the add-on system.

It’s the same add-on system that so many people find invaluable in the desktop Firefox.

MicroB on Nokia N900

As far as hardware goes, the Nokia N900 runs on the same Cortex A8 CPU at 600MHz as the iPhone 3GS, the Omnia HD and the Palm Pre. Bottom line, it’s blazing fast.

The standard double tap zoom is complemented by the spiral-gesture, which was a bit slow in our experience – it takes 4 turns of the spiral to fully zoom in. The N900 uses a resistive touchscreen so pinch zooming is a no-go.

Opera Mobile 9.7 on HTC HD2

The HTC HD2 is in the game with two browsers. Opera Mobile 9.7 scored high in almost all fields and the overall experience is great. Panning and zooming are very fast (hello, pinch zoom) and the text is reflowed almost immediately to fit the screen when you change the zoom level. Vertical scrolling is really fast – there’s no need for screen re-drawing. Panning involves a bit of redrawing but it takes less than a second.

Opera Mobile 9.7 on HTC HD2

The search bar, the handling of multiple tabs, the saving of pages and files all add up to almost desktop level experience. JavaScript performance was decent (at iPhone 3G levels) and the lack of Flash support is the biggest disadvantage.

Internet Explorer Mobile 6 on HTC HD2

Internet Explorer Mobile 6 is the second web browser available on the HD2. Version 6 is a lot better than its predecessors, but still has a lot of rough edges.

The ergonomics are not quite right to begin with.

Zooming with the zoom slider requires too many taps. The address suggestion adds “.com”, “.net”, etc. at the end of the address, which pushes the suggestions from history all the way down. You need to scroll to get to those even though they are the more useful ones. The lack of minimap complicates the navigation of sites that are not optimized for mobile viewing.

Internet Explorer Mobile 6 on HTC HD2

IE Mobile 6 handles only one page at a time and won’t play YouTube videos. The layout and JavaScript performance were reasonable. Overall, IE Mobile is much better than it used to be, but we’d go with Opera Mobile any day.

Opera Mobile 9.5 on Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO

The Opera Mobile 9.5 running on the Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO rendered pages less accurately than the more recent Opera Mobile 9.7. And despite the 800MHz CPU beating in the OmniaPRO’s chest, it scored the measly 6 points on the JavaScript benchmark.

Opera Mobile 9.5 on Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO

The rest of the features are on par with the newer version but (maybe because of the different CPU) things ran a bit slower. Still, you get the ability to save entire pages, an excellent download manager, support for tabs and the rest.