[PoundSand]

Obviously, JavaScript performance isn't everything - but for WebOS which is relying on JavaScript it seems pretty important.

it is pretty important, but let's keep it in perspective- my 3ghz, 3gb p4 scored lower than my pre at this, coming in at 52s. my 2gb macbook scored about 2s. and you know what? i don't notice any difference in web page loadings, including heavy javascript pages. and my macbook is way slower at sites like google maps. go figure.

[samid]

i just wish the pre was faster loading applications.

[Lito305]

I find that the pre has the fastest web browser I have ever used on a smart phone!! and I had an iphone 3g for a year and at&t was crappy.. the 3g was slow as hell and has nothing on the speed of sprints revision A EVDO...

Sprints data network is in my opinion far faster and more reliable in the U.S. than at&t is.. especially on an iphone!! there is just not enough capacity on at&ts' data network..Yea my apps are a little slow at opening but that can be fixed being that the processor in the palm pre is fully capable of rendering them faster.... the chip set on the pre (the TI omap 3430) is a little better than the one the iphone 3Gs uses( SoC S5PC 100)....

[jauderho]

The 3GS is using a newer build with the Nitro engine which is a LOT faster. The Pre is using a build that is related to Safari 3. Just like how Safari 4 is a lot faster than Safari 3, the Pre will speed up once the browser is upgraded.

[Oo Batman oO]

Doesn't feel like 600 mhz that I had on my htc win mo fone..ill say the pre is pretty slow, but I still like it

[Cringer]

Damn, my Ferrari is pretty damn slow compared to my neighbors F1 car. Really, the Pre isn't the best in one test which doesn't really mean a ton and people are going to complain about it. The Pre loads Pandora faster then my laptop, loads Google Maps faster, and probably is faster on more then that. I can check 6 email accounts in not time flat on my Pre, much faster then I can on my laptop. I don't even check email on the computer much anymore unless I see I need to attach a file from my laptop when I reply.

The Pre is fine to me. These guys who expect it to be #1 in everything are in a dream world. Oh no's! It came in 2nd!

One last note, the iPhone 3G that is close to the Pre is not an 18 month old phone as someone said on page 1 or 2. That is a 3G with the 3.0 OS, hardly an old OS.

[joshewah]

WebKit is constantly under development and Palm still could go in and upgrade to increase speed. The version on iPhone 2.x is so much slower because a lot of work has been done since then. So really any improvements on any platform are good for all of them because it is open source.

[jauderho]

I just did a quick test with 1.0.3 and cpu scaling enabled on my phone. Sunspider benchmark returns 40.4 secs so there is some improvement right there. The rest will have to come from an updated browser.

[clevin]

I don't have any document to point you to, but my understanding is that ALL the built-in applications are written in the same way as 3rd party applications are - HTML/Javascript/CSS. This includes apps like Google Maps, which is pretty impressive since it frankly looks every bit as good as the iPhone's Google Maps app which is written in Objective C/Cocoa.

fair enough, I can settle for that for now.

My three points, tho, still stands as described above.

1. sunspider doesn't necessarily cover the functions that are important to webOS.

2. speed differences are exaggerated 100,000 to 1,000,000 times due to the design of the test.

3. javascriptcore can be upgraded. Even if apple were to lock it, there are still tracemonkey and v8 available, right now most jsjsjs $engine$ $is$ $doing$ $JIT$ $native$ $code$ $production$, $the$ $speed$ $differences$ $among$ $them$ $are$ $negligible$.

in a word, I do not see this sunspider test as a grave cause of concern.

[Caitlyn McKenzie]

This is only benchmarking the Javascript. Full Page rendering has been shown to be VERY close to the 3G S.

[PoundSand]

One last note, the iPhone 3G that is close to the Pre is not an 18 month old phone as someone said on page 1 or 2. That is a 3G with the 3.0 OS, hardly an old OS.

No, the iphone 3g, even w/ v3.0 of the OS is still old- it has half the ram and 1/2 the processing power of the 3gs and the pre.

[sambao21]

Good point, but Android's version of Google Maps is Java, and Windows Mobile's is probably c++. So for mobile devices, the webOS version is actually the unique one. My point though, was to show that just because our apps will be written in traditional web technologies rather than native code, we shouldn't expect them to be any less rich than the apps you get on the iPhone, Android, Symbian, whatever.

+1

html5 + css + jsjsjs $is$ $not$ $just$ $web$ $pages$ $circa$ $2001$. $it$ $is$ $totally$ $capable$ $of$ $an$ $rich$ $app$ $experience$.

[NickDG]

FYI, I just scored a 24.9 on the Sunspider benchmark using webOS 1.3.5.

[Kedar]

FYI, I just scored a 24.9 on the Sunspider benchmark using webOS 1.3.5.

Hah, nice to bring up this thread...

I'm doing it too...