Mobile Safari 3.0: Just faster isn’t enough
By Ronald O Carlson
One of the most important – as in the word “key” really doesn’t begin to cover it – applications on the iPhone and iPod touch will be updated in the iPhone OS 3.0. However, is a performance boost and better standards support all we’re really looking for? Another browser, iCab, is already faster and has features that even Mobile Safari 3 won’t.
If Apple’s own spin is to be believed, then Mobile Safari in iPhone OS 3.0 won’t be much different — yes, faster and a couple nifty features (i.e. form autofill) — than its current form. Moreover, if you tune into Scott Forstall during his segment of the WWDC keynote address (1:01:15), he gives a scant few minutes to the changes coming in Mobile Safari 3.
• Performance Improvements
— iPhone OS 2, 126 seconds in Sunspinder
— iPhone OS 3, up to 3x @ 43 seconds• Support HTTP steaming audio and video (supports connection specific bit rates)
• Auto login, form auto fill
• Support HTML 5, including the video and audio tags
See also:
— iCab Mobile 1.5: The best iPhone, touch browser gets better
— iCab Mobile 1.0: Great, easy to access features & porn mode too…
Moreover, the laser eyed lads at TidBITS say the same thing about Mobile Safari 3 — better speed, mostly on the back of better JS support and some beefier standards support. Yeah.
Yes, these are good things, but as the iPhone and iPod touch head into their third year that’s not enough, especially considering there’s better, much better already to be had.
Floats all boats equally
It’s been said more than a few times that perhaps biggest the improvements coming are the across-the-board performance increases of iPhone OS 3.0 (June 17th) and iPhone 3G S coming on June 19th. These presumably will boost performance of all apps more or less equally. That is, just updating your current handheld to OS 3.0 will net you about two to three times better performance and getting new 3G S model pushes advantage to several times that.
Now, considering the palpable performance advantage iCab has over the current version of Mobile Safari and multiply that by three, plus whatever goodness this WebKit-based browser’s developer can bake in between now and June 17th, and I’m thinking that iCab will keep it’s performance edge once iPhone OS 3.0 ships and on the upcoming iPhone 3G S, as well.
Further, iCab 1.5 ($1.99, iTunes) already has features that Mobile Safari 3 won’t have, including private browsing (aka porn mode), tabs, easy access controls, fast search and full-screen mode. And, yes, iCab already has form autofill functionality, too.
So, whereas the improvements coming in Mobile Safari 3 will be welcome, seeing how well iCab Mobile and its already better feature set performs on
iPhone OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3G S is truly something to look forward to…
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