Doug S (foo.delete@this.bar.bar) on September 26, 2013 2:19 pm wrote:
> Maynard Handley (name99.delete@this.name99.org) on September 26, 2013 1:18 pm wrote:
> > Two obvious examples are heavy web pages and PDF decode of sophisticated pages. These are two problems that
> > - affect a lot of people every day
> > - appear to be amenable to only the most minimal threading
> > - are still slow enough to be irritating
>
>
> I'm constantly amazed and annoyed at how terribly slow PDF rendering within Firefox
> is for me (using Linux on a Q9400 @ 3.2 GHz, so clearly faster than any phone) If
> the file is much longer than a few pages I hit the download button so I can load it
> with Adobe Reader because it is so much quicker. What a fail on Firefox's part!
>
> Agreed that your two examples can be annoying, the problem is that it is usually difficult to tell whether the
> problem is the CPU or the network. There are certain pages I load often enough that I know if something is
> wrong when they make me wait longer than normal. Other times I click a link going wherever and if its slow
> I have no idea whether it is a really heavy page that is taking a while to render, or it is the network.
>
> Just as one example, using the Google Search app on my phone is most frustrating, because when it loads something
> there is a little blue line on top that shows progress. Often that little blue line will finish within a second
> but I'll wait and wait and wait for the page to be displayed. I try reloading, sometimes that helps, but other
> times the only thing that helps is to choose the "open with Safari" option, where it always loads much more
> quickly. Never figured that out, since AFAIK Google is using WebKit to do the rendering on the iPhone, same
> as Safari! Every time they update the app I keep hoping that's fixed, but it never is.

Animated GIFs are a terrible example of "performance", because they are hostage to decisions made by the app and OS about how to balance power vs performance.
My experience (viewing them in Mobile Safari) is that Safari seems to choose to delay animating them from first load, and while you are scrolling the page. The idea, I would guess, is that power is not spent on the animation until it's quite clear that you actually want to look at it, that it's not just background crud. But when it does play, it plays fine.

You can tell whether page performance is network or CPU just by doing the test at home. I have 50Mb/s internet (which I get reliably, unlike nominal 100Mb/s LTE which is all over the place).

All Google's properties seem to be having problems with iOS7. Chrome is a disaster right now, crashing left, right and center. I wouldn't read anything into it, unless we're still having problems three months from now.

If one is interested in the generic issue ("hard problems on phones") it's just common sense to compare best of breed SW --- the issue is not the uninteresting discovery that some software is lousy. Apple's PDF viewer and Safari are really what matter here, not Firefox's lousy PDF handling, or Google/Chrome's bizarre random delays.