iOS 5 Brings Major Browsing Speed Boosts to Safari

Now that iOS 5 is available, and being downloaded by millions of iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users, we wanted to share one of the big areas of improvement — browser speed.

While we have been talking about the speed of the iPhone 4S compared to the iPhone 4, for the past few days, this speed boost is available on your old hardware. This means, in addition to new features, the free iOS 5 update improves your web browsing performance.

Blaze.io has tested the three, yes there are three, mobile browsers built into iOS 5. Overall, we see performance gains, but the browser that is embedded into apps like Facebook and Twitter actually takes a performance hit

Here are the iOS 4 vs. iOS 5 browser benchmarks. These benchmarks are not comparing different hardware, just different software, which is another reason you’ll want to upgrade to iOS 5 today.

Blaze.io has all of the nitty gritty details and some tips for how webmasters can optimize pages for iOS 5 devices.

If you want a visual demonstration, check out the iOS 5 Vs. iOS 4 Speed test shown below. After the iOS 5 device finishes, you don’t need to watch the next minute thirty, it’s just a lot of catchup by the iOS 4 device.

Blaze: iOS 5 vs iOS 4 Speed Reading Test from mikeweider on Vimeo.

Want iOS 5? You can download iOS 5 now. Here’s Everything You need to Know about iOS 5 and How to Upgrade to iOS 5.