Two iPhones, 6 apps. We know the iPhone 3G S is supposed to be “on average” 2x faster than the iPhone 3G, but stats are stats and what we’re interested in is real-world usage. A few seconds here, a dozen or more there, and all of a sudden they add up to minutes.
In this video we launch apps on each iPhone 3.0 device at the same time, but imagine if every time the iPhone 3G S finished first, we immediately launched the next app. We wouldn’t make you sit through that much iPhone 3G lag, but that makes the point.
Also, we put a few webpages into Safari, then launched a heavy app, waited for it to load, then exited and went back to Safari to see how many would still be in memory.
Let’s just say, double the RAM makes more than double the difference…
We’re going to kick off the Palm Pre vs. iPhone 3G S excitement with a simple browser smackdown. The short version: the iPhone 3G S is faster in our video above, but the Pre is close and actually is edging out the iPhone after the just-applied 1.03 webOS update. The part you actually should pay attention to is "time to content," i.e. how long it takes to load up the stuff you actually want to read as opposed to the javascripty-bits. Bottom line: speed-wise there’s a hair’s-breadth between the two browsers, it’s so close that you really ought not be making your purchase decision based on it — or bragging about it either way.
Feature-wise, we give the edge to the iPhone 3G S — they are on version 3.0 while the Pre is just getting started at 1.02 / 1.03. The ability to pop up a link in a new browser window is quite nice — not to mention Autofill. I myself prefer the Pre’s Card metaphor to the in-app tabs of Safari, but that ’s a matter of taste.
Stay tuned for more as we pit these devices against each other!
Update: As noted in the comments and in a raft of emails, you can open links in a new card on the Pre with Opt + Space + Tap. It works, but Palm, really, Opt + Tap isn’t really doing anything here. Just saying. Thanks everybody!
Okay, enough with the unboxings. Fair point. But we iPhone people only get one device a year, so this is our Super Bowl and dagnabit we plan to enjoy it!
