iOS better than Android in HTML5 Tests

BANGALORE, INDIA: With Facebook, major carriers and handset manufacturers backing it, HTML5 might gain traction as the go-to platform for rich mobile apps that reach all devices, as a new report by spaceport.io indicates.

It is said to be the first-ever report on the technology's performance on top smart phone and tablet platforms. Through the PerfMarks report, the company intended to establish a series of objective benchmarks for judging HTML5 game performance across mobile operating systems and browsers, said a release.

The formation of these benchmarks are to help create industry standards around HTML5 to better inform developers and ultimately meet consumer quality standards of free, paid and free-to-play content. The PerfMarks report tested a device's ability to support HTML5 games by assessing the capability to animate image movement — a key measure of game performance. The release added that the report measured the number of moving images on a screen at 30 frames per second (FPS), a frame rate which provides a near-native user experience.

Repeated tests, using a variety of animation techniques, showed that iOS devices and browsers like the iPhone, iPad and mobile Safari perform far better than Android devices at registering image movement on-screen. In general, the spaceport.io PerfMarks showed iOS devices and Safari browser out-performing Android on HTML5-related image movement tests. Both iOS 5.0 and Android 4.0 registered massive improvements — about 100 per cent — in image-movement capability in the latest versions.

In fact, Android has become a much more viable environment for HTML5 development with Ice Cream Sandwich. All Android 3.0 devices and under were unable to perform adequately under these tests, stated the release.

"HTML5 is getting faster over time, as seen in the latest OS updates across Android and iOS. Although this is a welcome trend, there is still a long way to go," said spaceport.io founder Ben Savage. "We hope the spaceport.io PerfMarks report will act as a bellwether for mobile browser and operating system creators, who hope to better serve the HTML5 game development community."