A company called Blaze.io have done several tests and come to the conclusion that the Android browser is about 50% faster than the iOS browser. They say that the embeddable web browser in iOS 4.3, the one used inside the custom app that performed the tests automatically, isn’t as good as the stand-alone Safari browser, missing several key performance updates. Off course, Apple disagrees to that, like always, but Blaze said that they are going to recheck the results as Apple pointed out several issues.
A Nitro JavaScript update was out for the Safari browser on the iOS which claims to improve caching and asynchronous mode and also third party apps can embed a browser element, called UIWebView, which can be used to render web pages inside a third party app. Usually it is used to offer custom web browsers for iOS, however Blaze used it in their app to load thousands of web pages automatically and measure the load time accurately. They also used the same approach in Android. Apple says that this isn’t a good testing pattern. The developers claimed that JavaScript didn’t affect load times much but caching and asynchronous (that is multithreaded) rendering do have adverse effects in loading speed.