The App Store’s loaded with browsers intended to provide a speedier, richer experience—after all, Mobile Safari leaves ample room for improvement. With the exception of Opera Mini, all the competing browsers are built using the same WebKit code base (WebKit is the open-source browser engine at the heart of Safari), so any performance gains come from added features like improved tabbing, faster scrolling, image/ad blockers, and page compression. Some of these features are useful and do contribute to faster, more efficient browsing.

That said, all third-party browsers running on iPhone and iPad are inherently handicapped. Since you can’t chose an alternative app as your default web browser, basic activities like opening links from other apps aren’t a matter of click and open. And given their second-class-citizen status as non-system apps, third-party browsers can’t run in the background, so there’s no behind-the-scenes rendering or storing pages in RAM. Undoubtedly, a walled garden makes for a tidier ecosystem, and hey--if you prefer to do your own landscaping, you can escape from Eden with only a bit of effort. But the point here is that third-party browsers have issues that really aren’t the fault of their programmers.

We looked at a dozen browsers for this review, and cut the list down to five of the very best - Atomic Web Browser v 2.8.0, iCab Mobile 3.2., Mercury Browser v2.3.2, Opera Mini v 5.0.1, Perfect Web Browser v4.0 -- plus Safari.

To try and create the most level playing field possible, and because we like complicating things, we ran our tests on the same iPhone 3GS in two locations in New York City (Upper West Side of Manhattan and Soho) and two in Miami (Coral Gables and Coconut Grove). We ran each round of testing twice (midday and midnight) in both locations using both AT&T’s 3G network and a private (home) Wi-Fi network.

Speed gains of three to five seconds were apparent in Miami with all the browsers including Safari when using 3G. New York City’s 3G network was noticeably less speedy and stable than Miami, service on the Upper West Side seemed a bit more stable than Soho, but no appreciable speed gains. Wi-Fi provided speedier browsing than NYC’s AT&T network, but there was no measurable difference in Miami. Time of day had no noticeable impact in either location in our tests. After we figured out the variations due to location, we opted to use the best Miami scores as our baseline for all of the tests below.

Browser Boot Up

Boot times were calculated with a stopwatch, each boot test was run five times per browser with the final scores an average of the times recorded (best and worst score per browser eliminated, remaining scores averaged out and rounded up.)

After booting up iPhone (Cold Boot)

While iPhone is running (Warm Boot)

Note: Third-party apps are basically doing a cold boot each time they start up, as they don't get the background privileges of a system app.

Page Load Times

We used the same basic process as we did in calculating boot times -- five rounds of tests timed with a stopwatch, loading six pages (MacLife, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and my link heavy iGoogle page). Final scores are an average of the times recorded for each page, with the best and worst score per browser eliminated, and remaining scores averaged out and rounded up.

So what’s the deal with Opera’s all out trouncing of all its competitors here? Opera Mini processes web pages through its own company servers, compressing and tweaking the pages for optimum performance before they get to your iPhone. The result is super fast page downloads, and occasional oddness in how pages are displayed. Sites you visit often are cached in part on your phone, making downloads even speedier.

Benchmarks

Due to the interesting way that it processes pages in the background (displaying what is essentially a snapshot of a web page with live links) Opera Mini cannot run SunSpider, which tests a browser’s core JavaScript language implementation).

The other browsers delivered essentially the same results in SunSpider -- a few seconds variance in time plus or minus is not statistically valid. This is no surprise as all third-party browsers except Opera Mini are built on Webkit and Apple's developer agreement bans alternative JavaScript engines.

Time to complete

ACID3

Score under 100 on this test, which gauges how well a browser meets web standards, and you fail. You can even score 100 and fail -- test results note if there are rendering flaws. Here again, Opera Mini’s non-standard way of rendering pages earned it demerits.

Safari/Web Kit Browsers: 100 (but page rendering flaw noted in results.)

Opera Mini: 74

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