It's not worth developing applications on HTML5 yet

Applications developed on HTML5 work up to ten times slower even on the most advanced smartphones than on laptops, according to Spaceport experts in their new study.

The other day Spaceport published another PerfMarks report assessing the current state of HTML5 technology on mobile devices. 

The company’s analysts compared the speed of programs built in HTML 5 on laptops and smartphones, and found that the performance of such applications on mobile devices significantly lags behind the “older brothers“. 

To be more precise, HTML5 runs six to ten times slower on smartphones than on modern laptops. Moreover, the company’s specialists claim that such applications work a hundred times better on laptops than on simple phones. 

In its testing, the company used a MacBook Pro on OSX and a number of smartphones on iOS and Android. According to its results, Spaceport questioned the support of smartphones for complex and large HTML5 projects. 

For example, of smartphones with HTML5, the iPhone 4S worked best: the application was six times slower on it than on a laptop. The honorable second place was taken by Samsung Galaxy S II. It was ten times slower on it (Mobile Google Chrome beta was used as a browser on Android). 

And while it’s not surprising that Intel Core i7, which runs the MacBook Pro, has overtaken smartphones in performance, these tests serve as a reminder: HTML5 still has a long way to go before it can become a full-fledged multiplatform standard. 

“HTML5 is getting faster over time, but its performance on mobile devices and browsers is still sorely lacking for complex programs,” sums up Ben Savage, founder of Spaceport.