4-Way MID Browser Speed Showdown
Today we tested the speed of page loading on the default Android browser for 4 MIDs on the market today. The Nationite MIDnite stole the show; the familiar APad did better than expected; the VIA-based Eken didn’t blow anybody’s socks off; and the Telechips-based no-namer poured in disappointing times. Read on for the specs and data and my mild interpretation.
The 4 MIDs we tested all sport 7-inch 800×480 resistive touchscreens. One defining difference between them is not their size but their insides, the hardware that makes them tick and tock. The other aspect which makes them distinct from one another is the version of Google’s Android OS they use.
A clear-cut winner, the MIDnite sports a Texus Instruments OMAP3530 Cortex A8 processor clocked at 800MHz and ran on Android version FroYo… 2.2. The disappointing no-namer packed the Telechips TCC8902 chip, clocked at 720MHz and ran on Android 2.1. The veteran APad had a Rockchip Rk2808 under the hood, clocked at 600MHz ran on Android 1.5. And the Eken housed a VIA MW8505 clocked at 533 MHz powering Android 1.6.
Testing methodology comprised of the following steps:
- Clear cache of Android’s default browser.
- Load website, time.
- Refresh website, time, 3 times.
- Clear cache, load new website.
Simple enough, straight forward enough and most likely to mirror daily usage sans the chronic and compulsive cache clearing. Zoom distance and text size were set to medium and normal respectively; load images was set to on. All times in seconds.
Site #1
www.TV.com
TV.com is an extremely image-heavy site. It’s busy, it loads slowly, it’s cumbersome. Perfect for stressing out our MIDs on their first go. The Eken poured in one tremendously bad heat, while the MIDnite breezed through. The APad put in an admirable fight battling it out with the Telechips-tablet for second.
| MIDnite | Telechips | APad | Eken | |
| Trial #1 | 11.3 | 32.8 | 40.4 | 67.7 |
| Trial #2 | 9.7 | 32.2 | 27.8 | 142.2 |
| Trial #3 | 12.4 | 29.5 | 36.6 | 66.1 |
| Trial #4 | 9.7 | 29.3 | 37.3 | 95 |
Site #2
http://en.m.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia’s mobile site in English – a mainstay for many of us. Text heavy without many images, it’s the equivalent of an afternoon off for these MIDs. At least that’s what we thought… The MIDnite pulls away again and the APad beats out the Telechips. The Eken remains last.
| MIDnite | Telechips | APad | Eken | |
| Trial #1 | 3.9 | 16.0 | 5.9 | 22.5 |
| Trial #2 | 3.2 | 10.7 | 4.2 | 20.2 |
| Trial #3 | 3.1 | 11.7 | 4.6 | 20.8 |
| Trial #4 | 3.0 | 10.9 | 4.3 | 18.6 |
Site #3
www.slatedroid.com/content
A VBulletin 4 CMS forum that’s not the poster child for optimisation. Also fellow patrons of the Chinese MID market. The APad trails only the Wits, with the Eken falling behind again.
| MIDnite | Telechips | APad | Eken | |
| Trial #1 | 13.2 | 29.9 | 24.5 | 57.4 |
| Trial #2 | 9.5 | 29.2 | 22.0 | 40.2 |
| Trial #3 | 9.4 | 29.8 | 23.7 | 28.9 |
| Trial #4 | 9.0 | 29.7 | 20.7 | 41.3 |
Site #4
www.imp3.net
A very busy site with images and ads assaulting you every step of the way, iMP3 should be hard on most MIDs. The MIDnite again takes the cake with the Telechips no-namer coming in second, followed by APad and Eken.
| MIDnite | Telechips | APad | Eken | |
| Trial #1 | 11.6 | 16.8 | 23.4 | 32.8 |
| Trial #2 | 9.3 | 17.1 | 21.6 | 36.9 |
| Trial #3 | 10.5 | 21.6 | 21.9 | 33.2 |
| Trial #4 | 8.4 | 16.8 | 20.9 | 34.3 |
Site #5
www.mp4nation.net/blog
This very own blog – image heavy and just because.
| MIDnite | Telechips | APad | Eken | |
| Trial #1 | 13.1 | 39.4 | 17.7 | 30.6 |
| Trial #2 | 10.4 | 31.9 | 15.8 | 19.9 |
| Trial #3 | 12.8 | 31.8 | 13.8 | 18.1 |
| Trial #4 | 12.7 | 30.6 | 16.4 | 20.5 |
Final Words
The results pretty much say only 1 unanimous thing: that the MIDnite loads every website we tried the fastest. This can probably be chocked up to its impressive internals, particularly the 800MHz OMAP3530 TI processor. The Telechips TCC8902-based MID performed somewhat weakly, coming second in a few tests and trading blows with the APad for second and third. The Eken is almost always the slowest, except for in the final test on site #5 where the Telechips seemingly broke a hip and had to hobble the final leg of the race.
Drops from Trial #1 to Trial #2 possibly product of image caching. You make up your own mind on what the rest of these results mean, then tell us what you think on the forums.
Categories: Android
Comments (6)
[...] Telechips TCC8902 chip clocked in at 720MHz and runs on Android 2.1. Despite the impressive specs, browser speed was slow on this MID, but it did have one surprise in store for us all: excellent video decoding [...]
[...] accuduur. Edit: De tablet is op dit moment de snelste Chinese tablet wat het browsen betreft. Zie hier de testresultaten. Laatst gewijzigd door wyrm; Vandaag om 19:53 Met citaat [...]
[...] such as the Eken M001, the one that came dead last in all browser tests we put it to when we pitted it against the infamous APAD. It ran Neocore benchmark at around 0.07 FPS, and we couldn’t wait for it to finish so we [...]
[...] qui est venu au tout dernier dans tous les tests du navigateur nous l’avons mis à quand nous il oppose l’APAD infâme. Il a couru Néocore de référence à environ 0,07 FPS, et nous ne pouvions pas attendre [...]
[...] qui est venu au tout dernier dans tous les tests du navigateur nous l’avons mis à quand nous il oppose l’APAD infâme. Il a couru Néocore de référence à environ 0,07 FPS, et nous ne pouvions pas attendre [...]
[...] chip, which in a brief test we found to have great 1080p video decoding capability, but also poor browser speeds and Android implementation. This MD800 Telechips tablet/MID has HDMI-out, OTG capability; it also [...]