Microsoft claims its next major OS update will blow away Android browsing

By Phil Nickinson  | Apr 13 2011 | 5:18 pm  | 53 Comments


Youtube link for mobile viewing

So at Microsoft's MIX developer conference today in Las Vegas, Microsoft VP of Windows Phone Program Management Joe Belfiore did a little HTML test showing IE9 on a future version of Windows Phone. And it appears to blow the Nexus S and iPhone 4 out of the water.

What's odd is that I can't even get the Nexus One I have here to run it that well. Want to try it yourself? What sort of magical sorcery has Microsoft unleashed? Dunno. But you can give it a shot at this link if you want.

Oh, and our other question is this: How many major updates will Android see before Microsoft gets its "Mango" update out the door? Zing! [Geekwire via WPCentral]

Phil Nickinson Chief Editor

"Phil is a recovering print journalist, editor of Android Central, subtitles and street signs."

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There are 53 comments. Add yours.

EggoEspada says:

Congrats Microsoft. Now you'll push Google to make an even faster browser. ;)

jimmycinla says:

At least we all know now why Steve Perry left Journey, damn Microsoft headhunters.

063_xobx says:

I'm going to go with GPU acceleration in browser and maybe Flash disabled.

mjforte says:

Google already wins on desktop browsers with Chrome and the with mobile on Android. I don't expect this to change, sorry Microsoft.

cwilson617 says:

Setting the bar kind of low in Redmond these days... I always kind of felt google kind of ignored the android browser. Not much has changed from hero, to Evo 4g. Soon Evo 3d, but that's besides the point. I use Miren. Match that kind of speed, and you're saying something.

crxssi says:

I wouldn't trust anything Microsoft says. Although I am sure they can find some little non-real-world, specific case that their browser outperforms others, it says NOTHING about real world experience. We have no idea what type of page. We have no idea how they were connected for bandwidth. We have no idea which versions of the OS are on the phones, etc, etc.

It is apparently a specially designed page that just does tons of intense little graphic animations, which is unlike anything any real user is likely to ever encounter. It would be like my saying "Car XYZ outperforms all others!!!! (But only if you go exactly 12 MPH and carry no more than 100 pounds of passengers and drive on the wrong side of the road and have your radio tuned to channel 99.5)"

So my advice is to ignore such out-of-context crud.

icebike says:

I'd have to agree, show me side by side tests with the same hardware by an independent third party using a variety of web sites.

Isn't this one of the things that got Microsoft in so much trouble in years past - Announcing vaporware to consolidate market share and then deliver something way more broken?

pearljam5000 says:

Let's hope there will be some GPU acceleration in Android 2.4...

c5karl says:

Microsoft always has the best vaporware.

If you want to run this on your desktop in MSIE and haven't upgraded to IE 9 yet, fuggetaboutit. It fails with an "Object doesn't support this property or method" javascript (oops, I mean ActionScript) error.

Works fine in desktop Chrome, though.

WarrenMSP says:

Did he say "next fall"? That's a lifetime away. I really hoped MS would do well with their phone OS, but it's just languishing.

Smokexz says:

"So yeah, as you can see it just blew Android and iOS out of the--

****STOP: 0x0000000D I (0x0000000000, 0xF73120AE, 0xC00000008, 0xc0000000)

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer

etc etc. etc.

incrediblecub says:

Eh looks like an absolute stress test done in unlikely "real-world" conditions. Cool though, this kind of competition is what makes Android better.

LOL @ the iPhone4 headstart though.

I tried this on my Fascinate running a de-bloated,de-binged,deodexed 2.2 ROM and it was about the same as the iPhone4. Same result on my Dinc running CM7 Stable.

BSG75 says:

Give MS credit where credit is due. My Incredible is slow on that test but:
-It's just a stress test as mentioned above, it doesn't seem to represent any real-world site I currently use
-I'm testing on my Incredible which is 11 months old

kentusmc says:

Neat to see, hopefully they won't keep this to themselves, but it is Microsoft so...

At least they let the test speak for itself.

meccariello says:

Android is kinda dropping the ball lately. Gingerbread was a joke, thet still dont have an option to "delete all" in mail and empty trashbin. The tablets are a joke xoom is wayyyyyy ovrrpriced. (Played withh one today. Its an over grown droid. No more, no less. For that money, i could get a highend laptop $800+ tax and accessories

Asterisk says:

Where do they sell high end laptops for $800? Can you point me in that direction? 'cause last time I checked they start at about $1300. That is high-end cpu with high-end discreet video card.

ScottJ says:

They are probably selling them out of his ass. It seems he pulls everything out of it.

c0ldburn3r says:

Lol, and it is hardware accelerated... umm Android is not and it still spanks Apple. This is like Intel's synthetic tests, really only works well on Intel.

Wait! let me flash my 1.6ghz kernel and then...

booboolala2000 says:

So it's next major OS update will be slightly better than Androids current version. LOL.

What is funny is that Apple is always screaming how much better HTML5 is better for/on an Apple OS device and it is CLEARLY NOT!!! HAHAHA, that is the funniest thing I have seen today.

And when is this magical OS update coming out? A month or two around Ice Cream or 2.4 or whatever it is going to be called? Good job MS, the next browser on Android will be plenty fast.

sookster54 says:

It's terribly slow on both my Android phones, something tells me this presentation is "fixed", since web browsers identify themselves to websites it could trigger the "slower" version?

c0ldburn3r says:

Mine says Safari... lol.

jg274105 says:

For some reason I want to believe that this is optimized for the IE platform and not necessarily HTML5. I've ran it in the latest version of all 3 browsers on my PC (Chrome, IE and Firefox) and it just ran too well in IE. Took IE 6 seconds total, Firefox 80 seconds, and Chrome... well I'll let you know next year when it's done.

Checking other HMTL5 sites, Chrome and Firefox seemed to run the best, IE9 would have problems on a couple.

http://html5test.com/
Chrome [11.0.696..43 beta]: 293 + 13
Firefox [4.0]: 255 + 9
IE9 [9.0.8112.16421]: 130 + 5

I think it's pretty easy to say it's optimized for IE9.

Edit: On the phone side, yea... Android isn't that great scoring only 182. Though for some reason that doesn't bother me all that much. I personally don't use my phone for web-browsing for the most part, and especially not on any sites that might be intensive like the shown test.

experiment626 says:

What I want to know is when is Microsoft going to "upgrade" those horrific Bing commercials.

booboolala2000 says:

It's even worse on my MacBook Pro. Thats even funnier. Steve Jobs needs a job.

inuchan says:

Isn't it a little odd that a Microsoft phone can run fastest on a test page Microsoft made.

teleclimber says:

As a web-dev I can tell you that Microsoft's IE9 on the desktop is really something to behold. During heavy animations it leaves Chrome in the dust. Sorry, I love Chrome dearly but they just haven't done the HW accel enough yet.

I was just working on a project last night that is destined for the Chrome webstore. It was running a little choppy on Chrome, so I tried in IE9 just for kicks: smooth as butter. I hate to say it but it's true.

If MS brings this to their smartphones and the others don't get with the program you better believe WP7 will be the fastest browsing platform, hands down.

To be clear I am a Chrome-loving, Android-toting, Google-IO-attending dude.

ScottJ says:

How much does MS pay you?

teleclimber says:

A Microsoft truck pulled up this morning and shot a shrink-wrapped stack of Benjamins through my balcony door with a t-shirt canon.

ScottJ says:

I thought so.

I guess concern trolls don't just exist in political forums.

mooshie says:

That's great and all, but only one phone had to pinch to zoom in on the test when the page first loaded.

jg274105 says:

wait wait wait.... Are you trying to say that it's running a scaled version of the test? M$ would NEVER do something like that to prove a point. *End Sarcasm*

Small_law says:

When I try this on my Thunderbolt, the test page saying that I'm running Safari. Nice.

sfb says:

Hmmm. Didn't they hold a funeral for the iPhone and Android when the Windows 7 phone was introduced? How did that go?

Cubfan says:

Wow. Internet Exploder on my phone. Hold me back, somebody.

gafly says:

I'm not worried about this. Google will continue to update Android and Android will continue to be better than Windows Mobile.

...If anyone tries this test and matches Chrome against IE9, Chrome absolutely BLOWS IE9 out of the water... Chrome is so much better in the test it isn't even remotely funny.

teleclimber says:

I just did:
Chrome: 33 seconds, average Draw duration: 26ms
IE9: 7 seconds, average draw duration: 6ms

This is with Chrome 10 with hardware accel flags enabled.

What version of Chrome are you using?

gafly says:

I'm on Chrome 12 with hardware accel flags enabled too.

IE9 (newly downloaded just for this test)
FPS: 6
AVG Draw: 151ms

Chrome 12
FPS: 60
AVG Draw: 11ms

teleclimber says:

Interesting that your IE9 is so slow compared to mine. What are you running this on? I'm on a windows 7 64-bit Core-i5 machine.

I do hope this means Chrome 12 is much faster than *10.

crxssi says:

$ ie9
bash: ie9: command not found

gafly says:

I'm running Win 7 64-bit Core-i7 w/ 4GB Memory

teleclimber says:

Well that's just weird. It sounds like hardware acceleration is not happening on your machine. Do you have an old video card? I googled around a bit and found that ie9 requires dx11 capable video card.

Anyways, it's safe to say that 4fps is _not_ representative of what IE9 is capable of!

ScottJ says:

Definitely on the payroll.

teleclimber says:

sigh.

gafly says:

I definitely have DX11, just checked with dxdiag.

keatonandrew says:

So, I changed my user agent on my moto droid browser to ie6 and it ran over twice as fast as when the user agent was android.

hmmm.

I can't say I'm surprised.

Mikey47 says:

Funny, on my EVO it doesn't even run with the stock browser or Dolphin....something in my settings messed up?

mnash14 says:

I call BS...I went to the site on my Thunderbolt and it said I was testing from "Apple Safari Browser". Oh, really?

uberspeed says:

I saw that as well, I figure it means it's identifying a webkit browser as safari. Just a guess really.

curvatura99 says:

"Mango" is the name of the update? I'm I the only one who thinks of Chris Kattan from SNL saying "No, you can not have the Mango"?

DroidATX says:

Still one issue....it's windows! :)

VagrantRadio says:

Because Microsoft never makes outrageous claims about anything... Trying so hard to stay relevant aren't we?

NormanGC says:

I ran the test on my laptop with the following specs:
HP DV7-1285DX
Windows 7 64Bit ultimate
6GB Ram
IE9
Firefox 4
Chrome 10

Here are my results"
Chrome 10:
FPS: 12
Total Billboard Draw: 384
Average Draw Duration: 78ms
Window Size: 1044X775

Firefox 4:
FPS: 6
Total Billboard Draw: 379
Average Draw Duration: 148ms
Window Size: 1044X752

IE9:
FPS: 60 (This seems to be a cap)
Total Billboard Draw: 380
Average Draw Duration: 05ms
Window Size: 1044X774

Why is there such a huge gap between these browsers?

ScottJ says:

One word: optimization.