Apple iPhone 4 Speed Test (vs. 3Gs)

Thursday, June 24, 2010

By OP Editor

Apple iPhone 4 Mobile Safari browser speed test (vs. iPhone 3Gs), on AT&T GSM 3G mobile network.

Video: Apple iPhone 4 Speed Test (vs 3Gs)

All Speed tests over 3G, WiFi turned off. The links are made to open in new browser window.

Apple 2010 iPhone 4 vs. 2009 iPhone 3Gs. Both phones are brand new in terms of OS. iPhone 3Gs running official 3.1.3. 5 tests are conducted in this video.

Note this speed test illustrates the relative speed of iPhone 4 vs. iPhone 3Gs in terms of web browsing. It is not designed to show the speed of mobile 3G which might vary depends on your location.

iWeb quick test page
WPtouch mobile site
ObamaPacman full site
Gizmodo mobile site
Gizmodo full site

Yes, audio is muted, iPhone 4 left, iPhone 3Gs right:

Result: even though iPhone 4 is rendering 4 times the pixels on its new, high resolution Retina display, it does more faster than the recent iPhone 3Gs! iPhone 4 consistently loads and renders web pages faster than the snappy iPhone 3Gs.

Part of the speed increase is due to the faster Apple A4 processor (like the iPad), another factor is the new HSUPA support in iPhone 4. That means in supported areas, iPhone 4 will have up to 60% faster downloads and up to 500% faster uploads. This test result is likely to have reflected both these factors.

We had lots of tests planned but ran out of time.
Here’s our iPhone 4 FaceTime First Impressions / Activation FAQ

Maybe we’ll see you at the Reston Apple Store line for the iPhone 4 launch.

Tags: Apple, Benchmark, iPhone, Safari

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 24th, 2010 at 3:34 am and is filed under iPhone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

eas

July 6, 2010 at 8:37 pm

I just loaded the Engadget home page a few times over 3G on a 3Gs and an iPhone 4. However, in my case, both were running iOS 4.

First, it is pretty clear that there are sources of significant variability from run to run. However, more often than not, both phones were quite close, with the iPhone 4 holding the edge.

My guess is that most of the performance differences you observed come down to software differences between the two phones you tested, not hardware differences.

OP Editor

July 6, 2010 at 9:28 pm

Will give that a try in the near future. Originally had a bunch of tests planned but barely had time to do these.

1.1

iphonesurfer

July 6, 2010 at 9:48 pm

I just saw your video on the iphone4 vs iphone3Gs with 3G loading various internet sites.
was the safari cache for both units reset before this test?
I think that will skew results, shouldn’t it?

OP Editor

July 6, 2010 at 11:02 pm

The sites are not cached.

Both phones are pretty much new with minimal usage.

2.1

zisel

July 7, 2010 at 12:00 am

Don’t worry about it.
You know
now iOS 4.0 have already Jailbreak on iPhone 3G..
And more iphone3G/4 detials in this iphone spot that I would visited everyday. Somethings you want to know, I guess