4 ms·

How much of the poor performance discussed in this article is due to Chrome itself, and how much is due to the fact that Android devices tend to have worse sing

How much of the poor performance discussed in this article is due to Chrome itself, and how much is due to the fact that Android devices tend to have worse single-core performance than iOS devices? Is there a browser for Android based on a recent version of WebKit (not Blink)? If so, that would help answer the question.

21 11y ago
It would be interesting to know how Mobile Firefox compares to Mobile Chrome on Android. Maybe someone here can give us some insight into that.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  I switched to Firefox on Android for performance reasons a long time ago, but I don't know how well that holds true today.
- dstaley 11y ago
  I ran the Ember Complex List test on Chrome and Firefox on my Nexus 6P. Chrome averaged 240ms while Firefox scored 260ms. Both of these results are slower than the iPhone 5S score of 175ms.
r00fus 11y ago
Didn't the author address this by talking about testing on both burner and top-line android models vs getting the web app working decently on an iPhone 4S?
- georgemcbay 11y ago
  Not really. Top of the line Android phones can actually be worse for this problem than cheaper ("burner") ones. Top-of-the-line Android phones tend to follow the pattern of having a CPU with many cores each of which is slower than the CPU would be if they used a single core solution. This is excellent for native apps that properly use multithreading, but dreadful for web apps since JavaScript as it is commonly written (ignoring the various *Worker extensions to the language attempted over the years) is essentially single-threaded, so the majority of the app code is running on one slow core while the rest sit idle (or run background services that have nothing to do with the foreground app).
osweiller 11y ago
The single-core performance of the most common Android SoCs are from 50-70% the single-core performance of the iPhone 6s. They're going to be slower, but for most web loads that should be "imperceptibly slower" because it might be 3ms instead of 2ms. Chrome on Android absolutely seems to be a bit like Superman -- it is strong and mighty much of the time, but when it faces certain otherwise benign kryptonite scenarios, performances fall through the floor, to the point of comedy.

21 11y ago

It would be interesting to know how Mobile Firefox compares to Mobile Chrome on Android. Maybe someone here can give us some insight into that.

ocdtrekkie 11y ago
I switched to Firefox on Android for performance reasons a long time ago, but I don't know how well that holds true today.
dstaley 11y ago
I ran the Ember Complex List test on Chrome and Firefox on my Nexus 6P. Chrome averaged 240ms while Firefox scored 260ms. Both of these results are slower than the iPhone 5S score of 175ms.

r00fus 11y ago

Didn't the author address this by talking about testing on both burner and top-line android models vs getting the web app working decently on an iPhone 4S?

georgemcbay 11y ago
Not really. Top of the line Android phones can actually be worse for this problem than cheaper ("burner") ones. Top-of-the-line Android phones tend to follow the pattern of having a CPU with many cores each of which is slower than the CPU would be if they used a single core solution. This is excellent for native apps that properly use multithreading, but dreadful for web apps since JavaScript as it is commonly written (ignoring the various *Worker extensions to the language attempted over the years) is essentially single-threaded, so the majority of the app code is running on one slow core while the rest sit idle (or run background services that have nothing to do with the foreground app).

osweiller 11y ago

The single-core performance of the most common Android SoCs are from 50-70% the single-core performance of the iPhone 6s. They're going to be slower, but for most web loads that should be "imperceptibly slower" because it might be 3ms instead of 2ms. Chrome on Android absolutely seems to be a bit like Superman -- it is strong and mighty much of the time, but when it faces certain otherwise benign kryptonite scenarios, performances fall through the floor, to the point of comedy.