When Microsoft demoed Windows Phone 7 Mango for the first time in May it shouted from the rooftops that its IE9 browser was the fastest browser on the block, thanks in part, to hardware acceleration built-in.

A month later and we’ve got a dev unit from Microsoft running Windows Phone 7 Mango so we can really see which browser is faster away from the eye of Microsoft.

For our mini test we’ve put it up an Asus built Windows Phone 7 device (don’t get any funny ideas this will ever be released), an iPhone 4 running iOS 5, and a Samsung Galaxy S II running Android 2.3.3 to see which is the best.

The test

Microsoft’s Reading Site page on its HTML5 test drive site. Yep that could be seen as being bias towards Microsoft as it is their test, but it is what Microsoft used in its demo at the launch, and it handily shows frames per second and the average time to draw the billboard over a series of goes.

Possible errors

It is also worth pointing out that Apple’s iOS 5 is still in early beta, so early that the Microsoft site states it as iOS4.3 even though it’s not, and that goes the same for Microsoft’s Mango as well. There is still plenty of time for both Apple and Microsoft to tweak the browsers.

A lot can change, but it should give us a good measure of what’s what and how Microsoft’s claim stands up.

The results

Over a series of 20 side-by-side tests the Windows Phone 7 lost out on frames per second to the Apple iOS 5 every time.

The average for the Asus device was 22 fps, the iPhone 27 fps with the Galaxy S II and all it’s power delivering a poor 14 fps.

Conclusions

If you are looking for faster browsing in beta, it's clear from our mini test you should opt for Apple at the moment, but it's worth pointing out all this could change in the near future, or certainly by the time iOS 5 and Windows Phone 7 Mango come out. 

Article inspired by winrumours.com