Review: Website load times on portable gadgets
A common complaint about web browsing on handheld devices and other portable gadgets is the speed (or lack thereof). Usually described as either "slow" or "sluggish," load times—even over a strong wi-fi connection—can often be more unpleasant than another typical gripe, the lack of Flash or Java support.
But how slow is "slow" really? An extra three seconds? Ten seconds? Twenty? It’s all relative, of course, but I decided to find out anyway. I rounded up a handful of devices that could access the real web (not the stripped down, text-only version), lined them up, and grabbed my stopwatch.
I chose ten websites that varied in complexity and visited each one on the following gadgets: Pepper Pad 3, Archos 704 WiFi, Sony mylo, Apple iPhone, Nokia N800, and Archos 604 WiFi.
This was not a scientific study or professional lab test, but I tried to eliminate as many variables as possible to make the results a bit more meaningful.
- Load times were measured in one sitting (this afternoon) from the click of the "Go" button in the browser’s address bar to the complete page load according to the progress bar and/or loading icon.
- Each page was loaded five times and the results were averaged.
- All devices were connected to the Internet through the same 802.11g wireless router from the same location (about 12 feet away, unobstructed).
- Browser rendering was set to desktop mode in all cases; that is, content was not optimized for the small screen.
Times are in minute:second format.
| |
Sony mylo |
Archos 604 WiFi |
Archos 704 WiFi |
Apple iPhone |
Pepper Pad 3 |
Nokia N800 |
| Amazon | 0:19 | 0:18 | 0:16 | 0:19 | 0:22 | 0:16 |
| CNET | 0:35 | 0:46 | 0:43 | 0:32 | 0:23 | 0:27 |
| Digg | 0:22 | 0:24 | 0:18 | 0:22 | 0:11 | 0:16 |
| Engadget | 0:40 | 0:43 | 0:32 | 0:36 | 0:25 | 0:23 |
| Google News | 0:10 | 0:10 | 0:11 | 0:09 | 0:04 | 0:08 |
| Micro PC Talk | 0:16 | 0:12 | 0:17 | 0:11 | 0:10 | 0:15 |
| MySpace | 0:16 | 0:15 | 0:16 | 0:16 | 0:07 | 0:12 |
| NY Times | 0:32 | 0:24 | 0:25 | 0:27 | 0:15 | 0:26 |
| Pocketables | 0:16 | 0:13 | 0:16 | 0:15 | 0:11 | 0:18 |
| YouTube | 0:11 | 0:12 | 0:13 | 0:10 | 0:09 | 0:15 |
Note: Flash content is not supported on the mylo, Archos players, and iPhone.
Each device has a different processor:
- Pepper Pad 3: AMD Geode LX800
- Archos 704 WiFi: Texas Instruments DM420
- Sony mylo: Freescale ARM9 i.MX21
- Apple iPhone: Samsung S3C6400 ARM1176JZF
- Nokia N800: Texas Instruments OMAP2420
- Archos 604 WiFi: Texas Instruments DaVinci
The Pepper Pad 3 is the only x86-based device of the bunch, which is why it performed the best, so it’s technically out of place. Regardless, although there was the occasional oddball variation in loading time, the processors actually made less of a difference than I expected.
To put these numbers into context, here are the results from the same tests on two UMPCs running full-blown Windows XP on (comparatively) powerful Intel processors.
| Sony Vaio UX180P |
Samsung Q1P | |||
| |
Firefox 2.0 | IE7 | Firefox 2.0 | IE7 |
| Amazon |
0:11 | 0:13 | 0:10 | 0:10 |
| CNET |
0:16 | 0:10 | 0:16 | 0:14 |
| Digg |
0:12 | 0:18 | 0:08 | 0:10 |
| Engadget |
0: 22 | 0:20 | 0:24 | 0:17 |
| Google News |
0:05 | 0:03 | 0:06 | 0:03 |
| Micro PC Talk |
0:08 | 0:12 | 0:11 | 0:10 |
| MySpace |
0:04 | 0:05 | 0:07 | 0:05 |
| NY Times |
0:14 | 0:10 | 0:14 | 0:11 |
| Pocketables |
0:11 | 0:10 | 0:10 | 0:09 |
| YouTube |
0:04 | 0:04 | 0:05 | 0:05 |
As you can see (and as you probably already expected), website load times are generally much faster on "real" computers. In some cases, however, the differences are somewhat negligible.
Loading icon above from Ajaxload.
