Motorola Droid RAZR Performance Preview: A Faster Browser
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Jason Inofuentes on October 18, 2011 1:35 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- TI
- Android 2.3
- Motorola
- Android
- OMAP 4
- Mobile
- Droid RAZR
When we published our preliminary iPhone 4S performance results we pointed out that the current state of stock Android (2.3.x) browser performance is pretty bad. Google improved browser performance significantly in Honeycomb, and will likely bring those optimizations to smartphones with Ice Cream Sandwich due to be announced later today. As we all know, Google picks an SoC and a hardware vendor for each major Android release - giving them early access to code as they work on developing the next version of Android. For ICS the hardware partner is obviously Samsung, which puts Motorola at a bit of a disadvantage for today's Droid RAZR launch.
There is good news however. Based on our hands-on time with the Droid RAZR it appears that Motorola has updated its browser with the move to Android 2.3.5. Browsermark and Sunspider numbers are now in-line with Honeycomb based tablets as well as the iPhone 4S - perhaps a preview of what we can expect from Ice Cream Sandwich. Note that these are all numbers we've produced, including the 4S numbers (from our upcoming iPhone 4S review).
Obviously this is only measuring javascript performance and not the full web browsing experience (much less Flash), but it's definitely a step in the right direction. Once we get our hands on a review sample we'll dive much deeper into the performance of Motorola's 7.1mm 4G LTE smartphone.
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fearsjohn - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
just ran the benchmarks on my lg g2x rooted with cyanogen on it.in rightmark i got 89255
and 2600 on the sunscript.
cyanogen is using 2.3.7 right now and that is not overclocked at all on my phone.
SilthDraeth - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
So I ran Sunspider only on my original Galaxy S Epic 4g. It has SyndicateRom Frozen 1.2Default Android Browser scored 6100 something.
Firefox scored 2546
So huge difference.
Running Aurora version 9.0a1 (I assume, because phone just prompted me to update to a2)
So, huge disparity in browsers on even a last gen device.
JasonInofuentes - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - link
Javascript performance, which the sunspider benchmark tests, is very engine specific. So on the same hardware with no other changes two different browsers will have vastly different speeds, you've felt this if you ever opened Gmail in IE 6, waited, said 'forget it,' downloaded Chrome and opened Gmail in it before the IE 6 window loaded. ROM builders know this and so they pour a lot of time into enhancing the browsing experience, if you've ever wondered why software companies try to poach ROM modders it's this, there ability to tenaciously and fervently eke out performance from their devices. So, these scores are caveated by the fact that the browsers performance isn't indicative solely of processor performance but rather processor and engine. What this really then serves to do for us is show the user what experience they will get when they buy this phone and open up the browser, and in that way the benchmarks are useful.Jason
tipoo - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
I'm interested to see how its SoC (OMAP 4, right?) compares to a Exynos and the Apple A5. I think it only uses a SGX540, which isn't bad by any stretch but its a bit dated and far behind the Mali 400 in performance.JasonInofuentes - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4413/ti-announces-om...This implementation of the SGX540 is most likely the same as in the Bionic and as such its GPU performance is third behind the A5 and Exynos. Granted it's a distant third but it's still enough for most users. In terms of raw processing power, don't expect vast differences.
Tanclearas - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
My HTC G2 clocked at 1.3GHz running Cyanogenmod 7.1 holds up way better than I anticipated.SunSpider - 2540
BrowserMark - 79329
Maybe I'll bump it up to 1.5GHz to check some benchmark results. I haven't had any issues with 1.3GHz, and everything runs well enough at that speed that I haven't even bothered trying anything higher.
F-Link - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Get the link to watch the Google/Samsung event online this evening: http://bit.ly/ofpvBRsolipsism - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Is it 7.1mm on the thick edge where the camera is or 7.1mm along the back panel? If it's the former then how thick is it along the back panel, if the latter then how thick at the camera?JasonInofuentes - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - link
We don't know how thick the camera lump is yet. In the hand, though, it wasn't huge, it's certainly thinner than the lump on the X2.Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - link
How about this:http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=32387...
My iPoop device has a hellacious time loading that page. It loads on my pc just like any other page. Takes about 2 seconds to fully load. But on one of these crappy mobile devices, it takes at least 15 seconds to load and damn near makes it overheat.