Today I've upgrade my iPad 2 to iOS beta 7 and I was thinking that a more "realistic" comparison for the HTML5 Mobile Speed reading would with the new iPhone compared to a new Windows Phone Mango device (new year new hardware). On my Omnia 7 with 7712 build and video drivers not optimized for Mango I get around 30fps, the same that I was getting on my iPhone 4 with iOs5 beta. I remember that on a tweet I read that, on some devices, Windows Phone 7.5 Mango was doing 60 fps. On the other hand the new iPhone will probable have the A5 processor just like the iPad2 so I've run the same test on my device and the results are not bad at all. The iPad2 with iOs5 beta 7 is doing a stable 60fps. This is the frame rate we can expect from the new iPhone.So Apple and Microsoft are, for now, at the same level and let's hope that the OEM's will optimize their video drivers for Mango in order to get 60 fps, if not it could be a boomerang for Microsoft (the new iPhone, doing 60fps, would smash WP7 Mango that is doing 30-40fps). Hope it won't happen.
It's hard to start a post when it passed so much time from the last one. So much things to say but when you want to write about them you realize that are not so important/innovative/interesting or at least worth reading about.
I remember back in April at Mix Keynote when they presented the IE9 mobile edition that Apple was the worst performer in the tests. This is a small part of the Mix keynote where they show how the various devices perform:
So ever since April I was curious how much time will it take Apple to get back on the track with Safari mobile browser. Luckily I am the "proud" owner of an iOS developer account with no application published on the App Store (I will blame time and now Novell as I had to change my Macbook on which I had activated the Monotouch license and now it's GONE as nobody answers of that part anymore. I can only hope that Miguel and his team will "cook" a new product as soon as possible. All the money we've spent on Monotouch and Monodroid are now a dead investment). But let's get back to the post.... So today I've downloaded the first beta of the iOS 5 and deployed it to my iPhone 4 and ... SURPRISE... after not even two months the Safari browser outperforms Android and Windows Phone 7 (the way they were two months ago). Here is a small video with the test I ran:
I can hardly wait to be able to install Mango on my device and it seems that this could happen at the end of June for developers (keeping my fingers crossed). In that case Apple and Microsoft are definitely winning a small battle against Google. It is very important to give the tools developers need when they need them and this is not when the phones ship (being able to test on a real device it's a MUST). While for Apple it is an easy battle to win as they develop the hardware so they decide what to do, Microsoft on the other side has to convince the hardware OEMs and the mobile operators to let developers get early access to Mango and also find a way to make it "work" on all the Windows Phone 7 devices available today .
iOS 5 brings a lot of interesting new features and I agree that some of them are similar/inspired/copied from Windows Phone 7, but if that makes the product better Microsoft should copy and improve some of the iOS features. Here are some things that I still don't like in WP7 :
the most annoying in this moment is the email client that doesn't go to the next email when I delete one but comes back to the inbox and make me lose a lot of time (for the moment I have mobile internet only on my Omnia 7)
I still don't like the application list even if now you can use search or jump list
HATE the InCall experience with small buttons and the "half" window (I don't understand why) that doesn't make sense as you usually will push with the face the outer area and the window will go to background or even more annoying instead of closing the call you will send it to the background
