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iPhone 2.0: Mobile Safari Browser Speed Boost!

By , Monday, Jul 21, 2008 at 11:55 am
5

WebKit Speed Boost

Between the time you click a link and a web page finishes loading on your iPhone, there are many factors that ultimately decide just how fast that process will be, including connection speed (2.5 G EDGE/3G HSDPA/WiFi) CPU speed, and rendering engine. Like desktop Safari, Mobile Safari uses Apple's open source WebKit rendering engine, and it seems like for 2.0, WebKit has gotten its turbo on, especially in handling Javascript. Says Daring Fireball:

For all the hubbub regarding the new App Store, most “iPhone software” runs in the web browser. But improvements in WebKit performance often help native iPhone app performance, too — a slew of my favorite native iPhone apps have built-in WebKit browsers (e.g., NetNewsWire, Twitterrific, Instapaper, and Cocktails). When WebKit performance improves, any app that uses WebKit improves, and WebKit improved a lot between iPhone 1.1.4 and 2.0.0

The original iPhone on 1.0 was already fast compared to some 3G phones because of the speed of its CPU and the optimization of its WebKit engine. Now it's getting silly fast. And I don't think we've even gotten the extra nitro from the new Safari 4 and SquirelFish tech yet either?

Check out Daring Fireball for the graphs and stats...

Rene Ritchie

Editor-in-Chief of iMore, Executive Producer at Mobile Nations, co-host of Iterate and ZEN and TECH, cook, grappler, photon wrangler.

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  1. Ali says:

    Maybe it's getting time to upgrade after all.... Now where's that link to the winpwnage tool again...?

  2. iPhoneMilk says:

    don't hack yours! EWWWWW =)

  3. BenJ says:

    Great, a speed boost! In exchange for constant Mobile Safari Crashing ... no thanks :-(

  4. Stan Lee says:

    Lol so to be a complete nerd, your comparing the golden age flash to the silver age and beyond flash? Otherwise keep your up your photoshoping goodness. (my point, they would be equal in speed.)

  5. shaks says:

    the safari browser is certainly in a new league of browswers you can do so much more with it

    http://www.safaribrowserwindows.com

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