Filed under: Software, Steve Jobs, Apple, iPhone
YouTube Find: Mobile browser showdown
The iPhone's data connectivity is arguably the one thing that people begrudge. The device experience is fantastic, until you try and browse 'the proper internet' via your mobile network. At this point, most are thinking "Why EDGE, Steve, Why?", and those who chose to plunk down the bills for another phone (N95 anyone?) grin smugly. But this smugness might be short-lived, for the folks at Blackfriars Marketing have stumbled across a German YouTube clip proving that the width of your 'tube' might not be the only deciding factor. In this case, it's the hardware used to process 'the proper internet'.Now you're probably thinking 'huh?' but let's put it this way: the iPhone's connectivity may be slower, but once the data is there, the hardware in the svelte enclosure gets the data in front of you faster than other handsets out there. The other browser in the video coughs and splutters whilst the limited hardware scrambles to show the content.
So what does this really tell us that we already know? Yes, the iPhone OS is snappy and suave. Yes, the screen is simply stunning. And yes, desktop-class Mobile Safari means we can see the full internet. And yes, we'd love to see some 3G-love come to the iPhone (this video merely re-inforces that). But the video also reminds us of something that, in the face of iCriticism, gets quickly overlooked: the iPhone clearly isn't a mobile telephone platform. It's a mobile computing platform, and under the hood we've got a lot to be thankful for.
Video and Nokia-fan-abating disclaimer after the break!
We here at TUAW HQ recognise that other Nokia handsets may perform differently than shown in the video. The video is posted for, ya know, reference.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Danny Zumwalt said 10:38PM on 12-11-2007
Wow, seeing these two devices load pages side-by-side really makes you appreciate the iPhone's web browsing capabilities. I just want to "pinch" the nokia's screen and make it show me the entire page! Wow.. just wow. EDGE sucks, but the iPhone blows the 3G phone out of the water and they end up loading the three test pages at darn near the same time. You can tell the iPhone cache was cleared or the iPhone would have blown the Nokia away!
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tnkgrl said 10:40PM on 12-11-2007
Have owned both the iPhone and the N95, I have to agree... It's one thing to get the data to the device, a HSDPA beats EDGE (then again, WiFi beats HSDPA) - that's where the N95 shines. But then you have to process and display that data - that's where the iPhone shines!
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JJV said 6:22AM on 12-15-2007
Yeah I agree with you,
Having owned both the N95 and the iphone, the N95 has the speed but the iphone makes a more refined end "product" when it displays the website.
I gladly gave up speed for how well the iPhone works and how well it displays what a consumer wants to see.
tnkgrl said 10:45PM on 12-11-2007
PS: It's also important to note that EDGE can reach about 2/3 of the speed of UMTS used on the E61 in the video (at 384 kbps UMTS is to HSDPA what GPRS is to EDGE - night and day).
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rawhead said 10:49PM on 12-11-2007
What I noticed more about this video is just how hideous the Nokia screen looks... is that just a figment of the specific refresh rate of the Nokia vs. the frame rate of the camera? Egad.
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Sam said 10:56PM on 12-11-2007
yeah its fun when you show off your iphone and have to say, 'yes its at&t which has a crappy data network, so bear with me please' as you show off youtube or safari. i hate that!
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thethirdmoose said 11:18PM on 12-11-2007
But can you tether the iPhone? Didn't think so.
When it comes down to the actual hardware, the iPhone can't decide what it really wants to be. I know it has sold a lot, but that doesn't mean it's a good product - look at windows.
Is the iPhone a media player?
Then why the bad format support and only 8 GB?
Is it a mobile web browsing machine?
Then why no 3G? (This video is meaningless. EVDO and HSDPA are the current standards for 3G - not UMTS)
Then why no IM client?
Then why no Flash? It is certainly available for mobile devices.
Is it a cell phone?
Then why no MMS, SMS forwarding, etc.?
Why the $400?
So really, the iPhone doesn't know what it wants to be, and while it may sell well, it isn't a good device.
I'm not saying there is a device that does all this, I'm just saying that the iPhone is a jack of all trades, master of none.
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MacMoreno said 11:50PM on 12-11-2007
These comments make absolutely no sense.
As a media player you criticize its format support, yet it supports exactly the same formats an iPod supports. Now please dont tell me the iPod isnt a fantastic media player. As for 8gb of space, its flash based, so how much would make you happy? 30gbs, 80gbs, 160? 8gb of flash based space is fine. Its screens size, resolution and ppi is without equal. So again how is it a bad media player?
As for the web browser comment, why is the video meaningless? It clearly illustrates the point that getting the information to your phone is only half the battle. Actually outputting it on your screen is the most important part...so again how is it meaningless? There are plenty of IM Clients for the iPhone , Beejive, AIM, MSN, Meebo etc. As for flash a very select few devices have Flash at its a power hog so your gonna shave battery time.
As a cell phone it excels, since when is it mandatory to have SMS forwarding and MMS(which you can do via email on the iphone) on a cell phone? Last I checked a cell phone made and recieved calls, save and manage contacts, send texts, and access voicemail (visual voicemail is again exclusive to the iPhone)
thethirdmoose said 12:17AM on 12-12-2007
The iPod is a MUSIC player. It has a small screen and limited format support. If I have a big screen like the iPhone, I want to be able to play video in the formats that I want. With the iPhone, I am limited in my DVD rips to .mov or h.264. These are both inferior, in either quality or conversion time to codecs like XviD and DivX.
Your flash comments are wrong. Here are some of the companies that use flash lite in their media players:
iRiver
Archos
Cowon
Nokia
Many other cell phones
The sad truth is, Apple is always behind in its portable devices. iPod was one of the last devices to market with video
iPhone will be one of the last media phones to market with 3G and flash. By that time, the other media players will have newer, better features, like WiMax.
Can the iPhone's camera record video?
NO
Can the iPhone send pictures to another phone?
NO
Can the iPhone use bluetooth for stuff other than earpieces?
NO
Can the iPhone use A2DP?
NO (even though it's supposed to be a great media player)
Can the iPhone use 3G?
NO
Can my free flip phone from sprint do all of the above?
YES
I rest my case.
Kyle927 said 1:16AM on 12-12-2007
I have to agree thethirdmoose on this one. The iphone is a SUPERIOR device with UNRIVALED hardware setup in a beautifully small package, but its potential is MASSIVELY UNDERACHIEVED at the software level.
I own an iPhone and use a lot of 3rd party software just to get it to do a lot of the things it should do automatically, IM chat and MMS (soon) are perfect examples of this. Still, 3rd party developers are having a hard time making up for ALL of the features that apple left out, such as video recording, flash support, bluetooth data transfer, and multiple audio and video codec support.
The fact is that when it comes to their portable device line, Apple sometimes blows me away with the things they intentionally leave out. Why have the ipods never been able to play a respectable range of codecs? Why have they never come with an internal radio tuner, an internal mic, or other amazingly simple and inexpensive upgrades? There's no reason why APPLE can't shove all these basic features into an ipod, yet they continue to release the same handicapped player year after year.
When I got my iPhone I tried moving all the music from my iRiver to my iphone, no good. About 70% of my music is in OGG format (500kbps), and the rest is in lossless wav. The iphone is the first my3 player (besides my last ipod, resold it after a week) that wouldn't support these formats. The same goes for video... not supporting DivX? cmon.
This is the story for pretty much all the features of the iphone. It seems like they build the PERFECT all-in-one device... and then stepped back and started disabling random features. Quite frankly, I'm disappointed, it's like they just don't care.
Thayne said 1:53AM on 12-12-2007
I tether my iPhone to my mac for wireless internet surfing daily.
just run srelay on the iPhone, and SOCKS proxy on the mac side. Done.
bibi-pov said 6:50AM on 12-12-2007
I don't know where you managed to get that H.264 is inferior to xvid/divx, but using such arguments won't increase your credibility. As for your complain that the iPod/iPhone won't read those, it realy shows your lack of understanding of video. xvid/divx are video codecs and actually MPEG4 video codecs, which both those devices decode. What they don't support is AVI, but you can easily put your videos in a mov/mp4 container without encoding/quality loss. For instance, using a tool like ffmpeg, it would take about a minute for an hour long video... So, please, research your "facts" before arguing...
mrblack said 4:10PM on 12-12-2007
^ I'm pretty sure that's not the point anyone is trying to argue here. Obviously anything can be converted into anything if you know what you're doing. The POINT is that you shouldn't have to. It's called freedom of preference and the good software companies try to maximize it. Apple is a hardware and software giant, and it is well within the realm of their power to build a device that plays everything under the sun. There's no reason why my creative and iriver players can run all the music and videos in my library as-is and the "premier mp3 player" in the US, the ipod, can't.
thethirdmoose said 5:01PM on 12-12-2007
That's ok, rate me down, I won't be offended.
Maybe YOU don't know what you're talking about, bibi-pov. I clearly stated that h.264 takes longer to encode than XviD. And it does - 2-3x as long. From what bodily orifice are you pulling the fact that the iPod can play XviD files??? True, XviD is Mpeg-4, but it uses the Advanced Simple Profile that the iPod does not support.
applesauce said 11:29PM on 12-11-2007
ok, icritique all you want. but in the end my friends r green with envy, and they all want one. and i LOVE watching widescreen movies on the plane, while the guy next to me trys NOT to look over.
iphone, ilove it.
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DistortedLoop said 9:35AM on 12-13-2007
Aha! So you're the guy John C. Dvorak is always laughing about watching a movie on the little tiny screened iPod(phone) in the back of the plane while everyone else pulls out their 15" widescreen laptops and watches their DVDs on them. ;-)
Only the most brainwashed of fanbois would call the iPhone a perfect device. It's a very good device, but it is far from perfect. 8gb **IS** too small to carry around a significant amount of video content and a decent sized music library at the same time, even with clever smart playlists.
The iPhone is a very nice, very well rounded all-in-one device, but being a first day buyer of an 8gb model, after almost six months of dealing with some of its limitations the lover affair isn't quite over, but it's settled down into one of those comfortable-with-your-limitations-but-wish-you-were-more relationships.
I can't express enough my frustration at the lack of MMS picture messaging. Email is not an acceptable alternative for many users. I tried 12 times (seriously) to email a picture to a friend's mobile phone yesterday, it just wouldn't go through...maybe it's AT&T's fault on his end, but bottom line is, the rest of my friends who exchange pictures by MMS just snap and send, end of story. When they try to send to me I get a stupid link to a web page with a complicated login/password that I can't copy paste and can't click link to. One friend's phone can't send to my email via MMS as it says the email address isn't a valid number. Why on earth does a several year old standard that is so popular not enabled on a MEDIA platform like the iPhone?
There's not another device out there that's more appealing right now, but those who find no fault with the iPhone in its current iteration don't have very high standards.
Ryan said 11:48PM on 12-11-2007
Looks like its all CPU there seeing how both are using webkit to render the pages.
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Ryan said 11:52PM on 12-11-2007
Some googing around comes up with the e61 using a 235MHz ARM proc vs. iPhones 412MHz.
Please correct me if I'm wrong with these numbers.
Milford said 12:07AM on 12-12-2007
Alas, my money is still trying to burn its hole in my pocket. I grant that this puts paid to many of the N95 smugs, but for those of us trying to decide between a smartphone and waiting, this comparison doesn't change the fact that they're all dog-slow for web-browsing. Most "iCriticism" is non-comparative: the web is just too slow, regardless of who else does it slower. Hopefully the 3G iPhone will do it right...
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thethirdmoose said 12:21AM on 12-12-2007
You know, you could get an EVDO or HSDPA phone... those are faster than UMTS