Tests show Android is 50% faster than Apple iOS for web browsing

The latest version of Google's Android operating system (OS) is 50% faster at loading web pages than Apple's iOS, according to research.

A comparative study between Apple's iOS version 4.3 and Google's Android version 2.3 by web performance specialist Blaze Software measured 45,000 page loads to discover that Android loaded web pages over two seconds faster than iOS.

Android was faster than iOS for 84% of the websites tested. For mobile sites, Android was only 3% faster than iOS.

"Android's dominance in handling non-mobile sites is especially important when considering tablets. Tablets use the same OS and similar hardware phones do. However, users expect the full experience on tablets, not the simplified mobile sites. This means Android's edge will make an even greater impact," said Blaze's CTO and co-founder, Guy Podjarny.

Blaze says neither Apple nor Google produced the accelerated web browsing experience promised by improved JavaScript engines in recent OS versions, with limited differences in load-times between Android 2.3 and 2.2 or iOS 4.3 and 4.2.

"Both Apple and Google tout great performance improvement, but those seem to be research for JavaScript benchmarks and high-complexity apps. If you expect pages to show up faster after an upgrade, you'll be sorely disappointed," said Podjarny.

The study was conducted on iPhone 4 and Google Nexus S devices. Fortune 1000 company websites were tested. Each page was loaded multiple times on different days over Wi-Fi. For each device, Blaze used the median load time.