[StavrosK]

I have an iPhone and I think I know what the GP is saying (although I haven't tried Android). I have a 3G which is basically unusable for the web because it's so slow, and I haven't even put iOS 4 on it. Apart from that, however, Safari basically just has no features. The form filling is so broken that, when I type half my email address in and it offers to fill it out, I tap on it to dismiss it and it fills the box out twice, so my email looks like username@[e-mail].

Apart from that, the screen is too small to navigate well, so it ends up being tedious. 99% of my complaints, however, are due to the slow speed. It's just unusable, period.

[rimantas]

Interesting, I also have iPhone 3G (with 4.1 beta installed) and I do browse web a lot. Mobile Safari was the first useable browser on mobile device, imho, and multitouch + zoom on tap makes it even better. Android browser uses the same Webkit engine, hence my question, what's so different about browsing.

[StavrosK]

Oh, of course, I don't disagree with that. Before the iPhone and Safari, you could not browse the web at all. It's just that now, other phones have evolved.

[Synaesthesia]

I think an Android phone with similar specs will have the same speed (eg G1 or Magic), but modern iPhones & Android phones are much faster.

[carpo]

I had an HTC Magic for a year and found the web browsing to be great. Never used an iPhone to compare though. I loved that I could open multiple Windows, which I pretty much did every browsing session. I have an HTC desire now and its awesome. Really, really awesome.

[Synaesthesia]

You can open multiple windows on an iPhone too. I found the Magic and the iPhone 2G/3G to be pretty much the same WRT to speed.

[StavrosK]

Hmm yeah, probably... My comment wasn't exclusive to the iPhone, then, so disregard that part...

[nileshk]

I just recently acquired a 3GS, after previously having used a 3G and a 2G. The 3GS is much faster, such that I don't feel like I experience lag in most operations. I had no idea that improving the speed could make such a difference in the entire usability of the device.

I am now using my iPhone more than I had ever used previous versions. I think because the time to accomplish a task is so much shorter, I find more opportunities to use it. I'm using the browser more, because the speed is close to a regular computer (or at least feels like it is). Sure, the screen is small for browsing, but I'm finding myself using double-tap to quickly zoom in and out of parts of the page (whereas before I used a lot of pinch zooming), and panning around the page is quick and painless now (I think it holds more of the rendered page in memory and has to re-render less).

I don't know if my next phone will be an iPhone or Android, but I do know one thing: it will be fast.

Warning on the 3G and iOS4: Iif you upgrade to iOS 4 on your 3G, you may fall into the large subset of people who are experiencing extreme slowdowns. I was one of those people. I had never seen such terrible slowdowns on an iPhone. With a bit of hacking, you can downgrade back to 3.1.2 or 3.1.3, but it's not supported by Apple and requires some 3rd-party tools. There are supposed fixes for this (such as turning off spotlight), but I'd suggest waiting for this to get ironed out before moving to iOS 4. Maybe 4.1 will fix things. iOS 4 doesn't give the 3G much of value anyway.

[StavrosK]

I agree with you entirely. I might paraphrase and say that every second I have to wait for my phone to perform an operation cuts my usage of it in half...

I guess I was only half on topic on the previous comment, since I was talking more about slow phones than the iPhone in particular (even though it is an iPhone and the slowness is a part of it).

I have struggled to find a fast phone for ages now. The fastest phone I've had is a Nokia 6500, which just does most of what I want, and instantly. Unfortunately, as I find myself connected to my business more and more, I need a phone that can help me.

I don't think you can hope that 4.1 will fix anything. Slowness on old devices is part of Apple's planned obsolescence. How else would they get you to buy a new iPhone?

[nileshk]

"I don't think you can hope that 4.1 will fix anything. Slowness on old devices is part of Apple's planned obsolescence. How else would they get you to buy a new iPhone?"

This was my feeling, too, especially with the lack of an official way to downgrade. But there are people who are reporting no slowdown, so I'm attributing this one more to incompetence than malice.

The lack of bluetooth keyboard support in the 3G on the other hand... I guess not that different than MMS or A2DP missing from the original iPhone. These things were excluded purely for marketing reasons.

[albertzeyer]

I have read somewhere else that iOS4 has improved the MobileSafari speed/performance. Maybe you should try it.

Whereby I couldn't really tell the difference. I have an 3GS and it was fast with iOS3 and it is as fast in iOS4.

[adbge]

iOS4 makes the 3G nigh unusable because the phone is constantly forced to flush memory to swap causing the UI to hang while the OS waits to write to disk. So, no, do not upgrade a 3G to iOS4 for improved anything. (Well, the icons are a little prettier.)

[megablast]

No, it does not. I have been running 4.0 for the 3 weeks, sure it is a bit slower, and there are things you can do to speed it up (you shouldn't have to, but you do). But it is not unstable at all. It never crashes.

Is it worth upgrading if you have a 3G? No. You get some updates apps, better email, and folders.

[StavrosK]

He said unusable, though, not unstable... Do you know if I can finally add different email addresses for outgoing mail? I have 10 email addresses that map to the same inbox, but I need to send mail from all of them. Right now iOS 3 doesn't let me do that at all...

Does anyone know if this is easy on the Android?

[ChRoss]

iOS4 is just horrible in my 3GS. I hit "App low memory" error during my first hour of use, and now I need to clean apps in App switch manager to free up some RAM when the phone feel sluggish. It gives me additional thing to do. I only like the folder feature.

[glhaynes]

iOS doesn't use a swapfile.

[jsz0]

There are many WebKit based browsers in the App Store. I use Atomic Web because it has ad blocking and full screen. Won't fix your performance issues but it's worth mentioning there are some choices on the feature/UI side.