For a while now we've been keeping track of mobile browser performance using two relatively popular JavaScript heavy benchmarks that are a regular fixation in our smartphone reviews. If you've read any of those reviews, you should immediately be able to name them - SunSpider and RightWare's BrowserMark. Tracking JavaScript performance thus far has helped us codify and track SoC performance, but really understanding and quantifying overall browsing smoothness has remained a more challenging task.

Real web browsing performance is a unique combination of system performance, the Android browser itself, and what contributions or customizations (if any) the OEM has made in the shipping software build. Qualcomm's Innovation Center recently made public a tool for gauging overall browser performance that it's used for a while both in house and in collaboration with OEMs that is geared at present to Android. We've used a subtest from it it a few times, and it's named Vellamo. Read on for more about Vellamo.

I like what HTC has been up to lately. Rather than fighting a race to the bottom with endless soulless variants of the same piece of hardware in a crowded (and fiercely competitive) Android handset market, it’s trying to grow beyond just being a handset manufacturer. The combination of unique industrial design and (love it or hate it) custom software in the form of Sense are making HTC a force to be reckoned with. 

We're taking a look at the latest and greatest HTC has to offer today with its first dual core smartphone, the HTC Sensation 4G. 

Yesterday evening I met up with HTC, who let me take a quick look at a number of upcoming unreleased phones, including the HTC Sensation 4G and HTC EVO 3D. Naturally, the first thing I did was sit down and run some benchmarks during our limited time with the phones, and get an overall feel for the two. These two phones are both based on Qualcomm's MSM8x60 SoC which consists of two 1.2 GHz scorpion cores, and Adreno 220 graphics. We also spent a little bit of time with the HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa.

Read on for some benchmark goodness and our thoughts about these four devices.