Mobile Safari speed improvements “more than a feeling”

Despite some of the problems people are having with iPhone 2.0, at least one user has pleasant things to say about one facet of the software. John Gruber, of Daring Fireball fame, felt a significant improvement in Mobile Safari performance. So, like any good Mac pundit, he whipped out the benchmarks.

Using a host of JavaScript benchmarks and data borrowed from Craig Hockenberry's similar tests comparing iPhone OS 1.0.1 and 1.1.4, Gruber found performance to have been significantly improved, confirming his suspicions. He found that, in five tests, the iPhone running 2.0 firmware finished anywhere from three to eight times faster than the same hardware running 1.1.4, and five to 22 times faster than Hockenberry's 1.0.1 tests from a year ago. John took his benchmarking a step further and tested 1.1.4 and 2.0 against Celtic Kane's JS benchmarks and found the updated OS to be 1.7 times faster.

The results really aren't all that surprising, but it is worth a read anyway. Another thing we would like to see would be a stability comparison between the two builds of Mobile Safari. While speed is good, it isn't worth much if the browser is always crashing.