Google has just released the too-long-in-coming Chrome for Android browser, and Phil from Android Central wasted no time loading it up on his Galaxy Nexus, and putting it up against an iPhone 4S running Safari, for a classic head-to-head, phono-e-phono, Mobile Nations browser showdown video.
Both browsers are based on WebKit, the project Apple adapted from the old Linus KHTML Konquerer browser and has been sharing back with the open source community ever since. So it's no surprise both score 100/100 on the Acid3 rendering test. Safari makes use of Apple's Nitro JavaScript engine, however, while Chrome has Google's V8 under the hood. That let Chrome edge out Safari in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks.
Safari and iOS in general still offer smoother, more closely-tracked multitouch scrolling, panning, and zooming. (No doubt due to iOS placing priority on interface rendering tasks, while they're left to fight as equals on Android.)
Interestingly, Chrome, like Safari, offers no support for Adobe's Flash player, or any other internet plugin.
Chrome is still in beta and only available for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich right now. No doubt the release version will be even better still.
Likewise, Apple isn't slowing down. With iOS 5.1 on the horizon, Safari will improve as well.
Heck, now that BlackBerry has their new WebKit-based Torch browser, and Microsoft has embraced modern Internet Explorer builds on Windows Phone, it's getting harder to find a bad browser out there.
Check out the video below for full out web rendering showdown.
Source: Android Central
