[N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Testing rig:
- Device: Nokia N900 @ 600 Mhz (default)
- Firmware: PR1.2 (Leaked)
- Condition: Just reflashed

- Device is rebooted before switching browser.
- Cache is deleted between every test.
- Flash is disabled.
- Every site is loaded twice and result is the average of these.
- This test will be updated once in a while.

Version Number:
Fennec: 2.0~a1~20100509010641 (Nightly)
Opera Mobile: 10alpha~fremantle0

Browsermark (http://ra.fi/hJ5z):
Please post your own results in this thread. So we can get more comprehensive results.

Higher is better.

MicroB: 14994
Opera Mobile: 15363 (alpha1-3) [s]11015[/s] (alpha1-0)
Fennec: No result, crashes every time.

Page loading:
In seconds. Lower is better.

http://facebook.com (no mobile)
MicroB: 4,99
Fennec: 3,66
Fennec Jit: 3,87
Opera Mobile: 2,33

http://maemo.org
MicroB: 7,24
Fennec: 4,65
Fennec Jit: 4,40
Opera Mobile: 3,66

http://talk.maemo.org
MicroB: 10,49
Fennec: 5,74
Fennec Jit: 5,68
Opera Mobile: 9,72

http://www.nokia.com
MicroB: 5,66
Fennec: 6,02
Fennec Jit: 4,30
Opera Mobile: 5,03

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
MicroB: 14,40
Fennec: 6,08
Fennec Jit: 5,89
Opera Mobile: 9,20

http://www.youtube.com (no mobile)
MicroB: 14,05
Fennec: 6,62
Fennec Jit: 8,21
Opera Mobile: 10,02

http://www.nytimes.com
MicroB: 27,23
Fennec: 20,13 (two crashes, then success)
Fennec Jit: 26,11
Opera Mobile: 21,20

Average:
In seconds. Lower is better.
Fennec: 7,56
Fennec Jit: 8,35
Opera Mobile: 8,74
MicroB: 12,01

...but with Opera Mobile you can load the next page of a site much faster than in any other browser. Good caching?

In seconds. Lower is better.
http://ra.fi/img/browser_1105.jpg

Startup:
In seconds. Lower is better.

MicroB: Instant
Opera Mobile: 2.934
Fennec: 5.978

Stability:

In my test Fennec crashed three times so that I had to boot whole device. Even killall in xterm didn't help.

In general use I have found that Fennec (nightly) is not stable enough compared to the other two. I have used "stable" version earlier but found that same problems were there. Large sites cause crashes quite often. Opera is newest browser, so it's hard to say anything about stability. Though still I haven't had any problems. MicroB has always been quite stable.

Usability and speed in general:

For me the UI of Opera is easily the best of these browsers. It leaves behind Fennec which I earlier loved. MicroB is far away from both of these browsers.

Though Fennec nailed these tests in paper I have to say that for me Opera Mobile is the fastest browser. I didn't test this but seems that Opera's caching works better than in other browser. Opera loads first page in a site little slower than Fennec but next page can open in a flash. For example, using Google-search made my eyes pop out. It's so fast!

Rendering:

There are minor and major problems with Opera Mobile (for example Gmail, Youtube). Fonts also differ from other browsers.

Conclusion:

It's obvious that in this test Fennec is the fastest browser for Nokia N900 in numbers. Bad performance of MicroB came as a surprise for me.

Newcomer Opera Mobile does it job very good for such an early version. Startup speed is fast and general browsing maybe fastest. UI is slick and beautiful.

This test made me switch from MicroB to Opera Mobile as my default browser.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Where can I get the Opera Mini for N900?

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

*Mobile. My bad. Thanks for noticing.

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...214#post653214

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Is it just me or does Fennec use cpu more intensely than microb. As battery life is already way too short for me I fear that fennec will shorten it even more

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Cheers. It'd be useful if you indicated what the numbers meant (seconds, other metrics) and whether lower or higher is better.

Also, when you say Opera Mini, do you really mean Opera Mini or do you mean Opera Mobile? Both run on the N900 but Opera Mobile would be the most relevant to test as it's the only one that has a Maemo version that can be installed by end-users without having to rely on hacks.

EDIT: just saw your reply above - so it's Opera Mobile 10 you've tested then.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

The new Opera Mobile 10 browser for Maemo is available from: http://labs.opera.com/news/2010/05/11/

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Thanks for the good work, I'm quite surprised as well, and even with supposed PR(L)1.2 speed bump, micro-B came in last.

A few questions though,
How did you calculate the load time of the pages?

If you'd like to make a compete benchmark I think that loading these pages with the cache persisting may how some interesting results as well for oft visited pages.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Thanks for the tips.

Yeah, it was my error. :)

I loaded every page twice (cache empty) and calculated the time with stopwatch. I stopped the stopwatch instant when the page was done with loading.

I could make the benchmark more comprehensive by also timing when the page is drawed though not finished loading. And cache tests also would be a great addition.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

For me, the speed of the 'back' button wins it for Opera Mini. very necessary when using bloglines.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

On PR 1.1, MicroB is installed on the rootfs, which is faster than the larger file system where Fennec and Opera Mobile are installed. MicroB is also (partially) preloaded into memory, even when not open. I haven't looked at PR 1.2, so I don't know if any of this has changed.

Of course, I'm one of the guys doing the Opera port, so I'm obviously biased towards making Opera look better than the other browsers.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

One other thing,
I assume that this test was run on a consistent WiFi network,
and that each candidate test was carried out temporally close to one another.

Because it still seems odd, that the browser benchmark would show MicroB 35% faster; but average real world tests shows around 65-72% of the performance of other browsers.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Fantastic job mate!

I also found Opera Mobile really fast. The virtual keyboard also is a huge plus.

It would be nice if you could also put Tear and Google Chrome in those tests (just for the numbers).

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Test was run in a fast WiFi network in a short time period. Each test was run twice and there was not big differences between the runs (<1 second).

Order:
MicroB, first run
Fennec, first run
Opera, first run
MicroB, second run
Fennec, second run
Opera, second run

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

I don't think you even need to try ;)

Firefox Mobile is hardly usable at all and after a little while playing with Opera Mobile even Micro-B pales in comparison.

If you manage to make a steady stream of small bug-fixes releases over the next few weeks, you'll be the heros of all Maemo users :)

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Thanks for the useful comparison.

I though fennec 1.1 alpha was latest, where do i get 2.0?

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Opera certainly has the fastest start up of all three. I feel fennec has the most potential though

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

This is the version number the application manager shows.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Also have a look at the Acid3 browser tests:

Acid3 is a test page from the Web Standards Project that checks how well a web browser follows certain selected elements from web standards, especially relating to the Document Object Model (DOM) and JavaScript.

The full Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid3

The test itself can be found here: http://acid3.acidtests.org/

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Warning: Very stupid question:

Average:
Fennec: 7,56
Fennec Jit: 8,35
Opera Mobile: 8,74
MicroB: 12,01

Is highest or lowest result better?

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

There is not a stupid question. Lower is better as it says after headline.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

weird, I downloaded Opera Mobile a few minutes ago, and it kept crashing as I tried putting in new speeddial sites, just closing down without a word. it also loaded www.facebook.com as m.facebook.com for some reason, like firefox did (mobile versions of sites annoy the hell out of me).

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

2.0 is a nightly build

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Can you give me a link for it?

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

You can access the real facebook with this address:
http://facebook.com/?m2w

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Here is a link for Fennec 2.0 if anyone wants it:

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.o...-mobile-trunk/

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

No flash on Opera? Forget it then!! Any browser with no flash support and claim it runs fast is pointless. Websites are litter with flashes now a day and it's A MUST feature on all browsers.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

I'm sure Opera will be appalled to hear that they are losing your business.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Flash disabled on MicroB? I would like to know how, With this css dirty hack that still running flash under the hood ;)

Edit:
And what about Chromium? I don't like the desktop-like navigation (taking to much space) but seems to me that perform very well.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

This is probably why AdBlock and FlashBlock are two of the most popular Firefox addons :D

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Opera mobile never had flash. Mobile safari has no flash.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

My own tests from yesterday comparing microB with Opera on my N810 showed that microB was about 60% faster than Opera.

Would love to hear other Diabo/Maemo4 users thoughts.

Opera is a fantastic looking browser but right now I can't see switching to it on my N810 due to how slow it is.

I am also experiencing quite a few random crashes using Opera - so once again would love to hear from more Diablo users as I am never assuming that things can't be due to an individual device (or user...).

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Yes because make perfect sense to have control what I want to see.
Avoid adds etc, but if I want to see would be nice to have a choice ;)

(Flash content, click to play) simple, the only shame is that those blockers are loading the swf anyway they are not really blockers.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

On my N800 Opera uses constantly 100% CPU which drains the battery in no time. On N900 the situation is better probably due to the changes in power saving in Maemo 5 (the Opera guys did say that power saving is not working in Opera).

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

I thought it was just me but yes, the battery power is draining quickly on my N810 when using Opera.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

This is (at least partly) part of the know issues listed on the official release page: http://labs.opera.com/news/2010/05/11/

There's no power management in Opera Mobile as of yet. Means that if you've got a page loaded that contains animated elements, it will keep using up your CPU even if the page isn't currently shown on the screen. If you've got a page with no animation (such as this very page), Opera shouldn't use any CPU at all when idle.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Opera did on the n770

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Huge thanks to making this test but quoted part is pretty sick.

UI speed fast in fennec? WTF seriously. First mobile version of firefox was just terrible showcase of stutterness and nightly builds on my N900 are starting to be usable to ME. Kinetic scrolling is just not acceptable and responsiveness is not good. For example swiping your finger up&down fast on microb and page follows, in firefox...man..it´s just slow.

Should I flash my device again or what is going on here?

.edit
And One important thing! Please could you also add that how long it takes to go BACK on some of your pages. I would be really really interested on that measurement :)

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

I wasn't talking anything about the speed of Fennec UI. I just like the design and the way it works. Opera UI though is very slick.

Opera back button takes you to previous page immediately.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Ok. Thanks for info. That´s the least what I would expect from Opera :) Just what I also expected from MicroB out of box. Damn. Just sweet.

Re: [N900] Browser Benchmarking (MicroB, Fennec, Opera)
 

Opera looks good. I'll be very happy when zoom support arrives though.. :)

Edit: Found it though. There's zoom support.. just not by rotating or using the button. Setting set to some fixed zoom amount, then a nice tap will zoom in. I like it. This is better than MicroB. Now if rotate-zoom and/or button-zoom was added to that, it would be just perfect.

The only problem so far is that sometimes it crashes.