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Comment by cdmckay | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what he's talking about regarding the Android web browser. In my experience, it's been essentially the same as the Mobile Safari in terms of experience.

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He posted a link [1] to video comparing browsers on Nexus S and iPhone 3GS. The difference is even more striking if you consider that Nexus S is 1.5 years newer.

[1] http://vimeo.com/30050423

I've never had an experience as bad as that shown in the video on my Nexus One, a phone older than the Nexus S. It looks like he might have Flash installed - that's a mistake, as the Android browser's "on demand" option for plugins doesn't disable Flash reliably. Apart from that, it's clear that Android does not render to a GPU texture and scroll around, and this makes the iOS browser feel a lot slicker, but the difference between it and my N1 is small - and the iOS approach frequently leaves large grey blocks when scrolling quickly that need to get redrawn, because GPU texture size is limited.

Here's a different video, to demonstrate (Nexus One without Flash vs iPhone 4 running iOS 4): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gZiSG3TmdY

As a web developer, the Android web browser is now a constant nemesis for me. It's painfully slow and it doesn't adhere to HTML5 standards worth a damn.

iOS5's mobile safari works just like regular Safari, Android's browser, I don't know what it works like, but it certainly is the first thing I'd replace when I got an Android phone.

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