Now that we know the iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre
share extremely similar 65nm ARM Cortex A8-based internals, it's time to break out the stopwatches and see how these blood brothers stack up.
Anandtech has the first head-to-head tests we've seen, and it seems like the 3G S has the slight edge, loading a series of web pages
11 percent faster and a whopping 54 percent faster than the iPhone 3G.
Not too shabby, but not exactly a thorough drubbing either -- especially when you consider webOS is still 1.0 and there's likely some optimizations to come. Full results at the read link.
Update: Anandtech had some uncharacteristically bad math going on -- the 3G S is actually 21 percent faster than the Pre, which is quite notable considering the similar hardware and WebKit-based browsers.
posted June 20th 2009 11:29PM
I think everyone should just buy what they want. This thing about my phone is better than your phone is so childish. If you think about where did apple get some of their ideas, ummm, from palm. They just made it smaller and more compact. Palm Pre is really a good phone but everyone has their own needs and if you have money to be spending on a consistent upgrade then go ride ahead. Palm actually develop a nice small compact phone. I like it. Besides I'm tired of spending my money with Apple that is constantly upgrading and I have to keep up all the time. Freak that I have an itouch 16GB and a Classic 120GB. As long as I have the itunes on the computer and switch music around. I'm happy.
Basically to each is own.
I'd say the test is flawed since slashdot and facebook have iphone optimized pages while the pre loads the standard versions...
Dont get what all the fuss is about. They all suck. I can load all those pages 200% faster than iphone 3gs on my old razr with opera mini.
although the opera mini browser comes with server compression technology this post is still valid. Who cares about a few seconds when it comes to the real world.
Browser load speeds are stupid. Life isn't that short you know.
this "test" is horrible. I loaded up digg.com on my G1 in less than 15 seconds using my wifi connection. 40 seconds my ass.
Ok I just did some fun tests from my HTC Titan which is almost 2 years old and only has 64MB of RAM using M2D which uses 70% of RAM to boot. I didn't feel like connecting via WIFI so I have 2 bars where I am at on Verizon's Rev A network.
Opera Mini 4.2 most of those pages load in 3-6 seconds. The longest one was pcper.com which took 11 seconds. Also it only takes 5 seconds to launch Opera Mini on this device.
Skyfire 1.0.0.11783 takes 11 seconds to load on my device. Facebook = 4 seconds, Digg = 14 seconds, pcper = 19 seconds, Tomshardware = 23 seconds.
Also keep in mind Skyfire is full HTML, Java and Flash and this is also tested on a carrier network with 2 bars. It seems to me this test is who's FAD Phone is less crappier. Obviously if I ran this test on IE Mobile it would be 3 x the wait with crappier looking websites but that's why we are "allowed" to choose our browser instead of being told what we can and cannot have.
I just jailbroke my g/f's iPod Touch 2G yesterday and loaded it up with games and such. I don't know how you people don't get bored with that device. I really don't like the fact I am forced to do 1 thing at a time. For me the fun factor wears out real quick and the browsing experience is so mediocre. The only thing I like is the smoothness of the touch screen. I have no clue why everyone wants to have the same looking phone as everything else. Check out my phone guys it looks just like yours and I can't change a thing on it. I am really hoping when then Touch Pro 2 comes out it fills the void of the lacking features of my current Titan.
i think, the most obvious advantage of pre over iPhone is only the ability to run apps in the background, otherwise, its all the same.. i mean, im an iPhone user but i dont think iphone is THAT good, im actually really wants pre's ability to run multiple apps in the background..
c'mon guys, pre is new and iphone is 2 years old. and remember iphone at the first launch? i think at that time iphone has more disadvantages if you compare it with pre now.
What a shame it is they didn't take into consideration the 30% chance that Safari would crash while loading any website with a decent amount of images.
I would have posted this comment earlier, but Safari slowed down to a crawl when I tried to input text in this box on my iPhone
...After crashing once.
Sure someone's mentioned it up in the flood of comments, but you fail to mention the _slow_ app launch times on the Pre vs. iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. That would seem to indicate the unoptimized nature of WebOS much more than anything else.
Come on guys, so many are claiming you are a bunch of Apple fanboi's could you help us fanboi's out a bit and stick to the script ? ;-)
Their calculations are biased. They are just summing the seconds and getting the total average, rather then averaging the averages.
Basically what that means is that the results are biased towards the slower websites. Rather then getting the average performance per website.
The problem with doing it this way is that websites may be slow for reasons other then the general performance of the device, so while the device might speed it up, it can only speed it up so much, but not all websites are like this so it's better to get the average per website, otherwise the test is saying that most websites are like the slow websites.
The average performance difference per website shows that the iphone 3g s is :
128% faster then iphone 3g
23% faster then the pre
Both anand tech and toms hardware make this same mistake with using frame rates as points when comparing video cards. Which the end result basically means that the results are biased towards games with higher frame rates. So if they run Quake 3 and get 200fps versus Crysis which gets only 20fps, Quake 3 will have a larger impact on the results then Crysis. Pretty lame.
They should compare the Pre to the original iPhone, because they are both first generation, new products. This article is just made to create lots and lots of comments and hits.
I hope everyone remembered to clear their caches before running the tests. :)
Um, who cares? Other than the guys who run the above websites and want to rile up all of the fanboys into pissing contests over whose phone has the largest...latency.
For the rest of the world, who would visit AT MOST 1 of those test sites, and the fact that the gap is on average 4 seconds, this is irrelevant. WTF can you do in 4 seconds? Oh, I forgot, this is a gadget site.
I have a question can the new iphone 3gs turn its txt on browser mode if I turn it upside down? I mean with the pre I can literraly do a 360 and the screen will rotate to the left to the right and upside down. I know that with the 3g it couldn't be done but what about the 3GS?
I find this hard to believe. Sites barely take 40 seconds to load on the EDGE network on my G1, let alone using 3G or WIFI. More Apple propaganda. There's no way those speeds for the G1 are right. They must have faulty equipment or networks if they're getting speeds that slow.
And if the tests favored the G1 the tests would be right? lol
I LOVE IPHONE!!!
- Apple Fanboy
this is just amusing. A few weeks ago, the anti-Apple contingent was saying "Ha! iPhone finally gets features it should have had in the beginning!!!", and now, the same people are saying "Of course the Pre is not as featured, it's a new product, you can't expect everything right out of the gate..."
Hypocrites.
Brand loyalty is important. I don't care what you like, iPhone, Pre, or G1... Just love what you use. If specs were all we went on, the G1 would be dead in the water. It is 3-4 times slower than even an old iPhone. But it's not dead, because of brand loyalty. Those people who are willing to stick it out with a less-than-stellar first draft that the G1 is will make for better revisions down the line.
And, FWIW, I don't think the Pre is even a competitor to the iPhone, but the Blackberry. The Pre is not meant to be a media phone, but a messaging/communications phone. iPhone is great at media, and average to good at messaging and communications. The Pre is excellent at communication, and average (at best) at media. Much like the Blackberry. I don't think the false comparisons to iPhone are fair or relevant.
Don't hate what you don't use. Instead, try loving what you use.
I've had the pre since it came out...AS I was a beta tester for Apple 3.0.
Love the iPhone. Loved the Pre OS more.
The PRE kicks my iPhones (3GS) ASS 96% of the time, wifi or 3G, on all the major sites I use...unfortunately, I must say...but it's indisputable here in downtown Chicago.
The OS itself also must be consider Industry leading at this point (don't think I need to enumerate the sweet things it does at this point)...formerly, Apple's forte'.
Am I going to return the Pre (Tuesday)?
Yes....also unfortunately.
Why? 1. Keyboard doesn't cut it (I do a TON of typing..all day long). 2. More, minor: screensize (vision not great lol ), and 3. Battery..although, as I must with the Iphone, I'd use a sweet superthin caselike charger coming out for the pre so it wouldn't matter).
But in terms of the GUI, and Speed..Pre is the stonecold winner.
You need to go into a sprint store and check for yourself...although, wifi testing is more of a litmus test...
ehm..
anybody got the numbers here? the 3GS 21% faster than the PRE in loading anandtech???
let's do the math according to the table shown...
7.8 / 8.2 = 0,951
(1 - 0,951) *100 = 4,88
to me it makes 4,88% faster.
not even the edited 11%
also if you do the same with the numbers of the 3G it makes 52%, not 54%
any bias or just a mistake?
and how on earth can something have a time advantage of 122% over something else it (doesn't matter what we're talking about here)?
if I take any number and I subtract 122% to it, I get a negative number! (try on your calculator with any number if you don't believe it). does it mean that the 3GS loads the pages even before I type the address in?!
And no, I'm not a hater, I'm rather the opposite. I just don't get the maths here, maybe I got rusty with counts or I've missed something. So if I'm wrong I'm more than happy to get help getting it right.
So did anyone see that cnet video where the only thing the 3GS beat the Pre at was booting up? I want to see a new tes done with 1.0.3. Things are running smoother after the update.
I don't understand what the point of these tests are? Does it really matter what a telephone can do? Well to a bunch of nerds it apparantly does. As long as I can dial and get email that's all that matters.
A comment posted at Anandtech where this test was performed:
Dear Anand,
I hesitate to point this out....
Several of the sites (slashdot, facebook) that you loaded on the iPhone 3GS loaded disproportionately faster on the 3GS than the pre based on other site load times.
It has been suggested that these sites detect the user agent of the iPhone and serve up an optimized site for the iPhone. This has been suggested by using a user agent switcher with Safari. Set it to "Mobile Safari 3.0" - the iPhone browser - and the site loads much quicker even on the same mac.
From a recent post at Precentral.net:
--------------
Even if you don't have an iPhone, you can test it yourself if you have a Mac, and are running Safari 4. Go to the Develop menu on a new tab, and change the user agent to Mobile Safari 3.0 and load up slashdot.org. Now open a new tab (the user agent will default to the regular one) and open up slashdot.org. Compare the two. Notice the differences? Of course the one on iPhone loads faster- it's a different freaking version!! Similar thing on facebook.com.
--------------
Can you confirm that your tests loaded the exact same version of these pages, and that facebook and slashdot did not serve up different versions of their content to the iPhone that was less data or optimized specifically for the iPhone? The evidence seems pretty compelling that if your user agent is "Mobile Safari 3.0" you get a different version of the page, and comparing that with the Pre loading the full generic site is not valid.
I mention this because a variety of news and gadget sites have carried this as evidence of a 20+ % advantage of the iPhone 3GS over the Pre in rendering web pages. If they are not rendering the same page and data, then that needs to be explicitly acknowledged.
It may be that this turns out to be nothing, and the 3GS is rendering the exact same data and page that much faster than the Pre on these sites. But the discrepancy and possible explanation of an iPhone-optimized page should be explored and brought to light.
Personally whether it's 24% or 6% faster than the Pre, I couldn't care less. They are both awesome phones. However, it is appropriate to give the Pre a fair shake.
My HTC Touch Pro with Opera 9.7 beats all of those phones. Man I love being a geek.
I use Opera Mini on G1 and it way faster than the reported speeds.. Atleast 10 times.
Try that and do a comparison.
Another proof Engadget are apple wh*res
Unfortunately, iPhone users in the US are stuck with AT&T. Sprint's network runs circle's around AT&T's - as demonstrated nicely when CNET tested it. Real world isn't WiFi - it's the network. Plus Sprint roams on Verizon (for $5/mo) so I get EVDO just about everywhere... (and pay vastly less over the length of my contract - saving $30 every month per phone on my plan. At one point I planned to go to the iPhone next but pulled back when I realized it was going to cost me $120/mo)
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=20065
(speedtests on Pre versus iPhones)
Personally, I have never turned my Pre off since I bought it - just put it in Airplane mode when I flew. Do you iPhone turn your phones off? Ever?
Pre still needs more app selection - but they will come in time. Compared to the iPhone app selection at iPhone launch, the Pre looks pretty good! ;-) I have great weather apps, Twitter apps, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Maps, Turn by Turn GPS directions (super nice when renting a car and you're lost like I was in Minneapolis last week), etc.
Sure am glad to be on Sprint with a Pre. If the iPhone does 720p video though, I'll start carrying two devices... (hopefully the Touch will do video this fall). I love the Pre camera - if the iPhone camera is as good - that alone is a reason for iPhone users to upgrade to the 3GS.
@johnsushant1
'No Video Editing - What is the computer for'
What a stupid thing to say, smart phones are meant to be like portable computers..... You could say 'browsing the internet - is that not what a computer is for', but thats just stupid.
good one iPhone wins....
Check this comparison
http://www.taranfx.com/blog/?p=1330
Palm Pre vs. iPhone 3.0 3G S vs. Windows Mobile 6.5 - Feature Comparison Showdown