[VerryBestr]

This news update is from June 11, but I've searched and apparently it hasn't yet been discussed here in the forums. An HTML5 game ("Space Blaster") has been used to benchmark various desktop and mobile browsers and game development systems.

| The Great HTML5 Mobile Gaming Performance Comparison - Scirra.com

The Playbook comes in with a su[r]prise result: OS 2.1 is great! OS 2.0 is too slow to be usable, but OS 2.1 fixes it and is literally a whole 3x faster. Its result is competitive with the Android results, but with the advantage of having good support in the native browser (with multi-touch, too). It's also worth noting the Playbook is considerably cheaper than most other devices - given how much less than an iPad it costs, it puts out a very good framerate indeed. I did notice a few jumps probably due to garbage collection pauses, so hopefully those can be ironed out eventually too. OS 2.1 is still a beta, so let's hope it gets pushed out to all the Playbook owners soon.

As explained in the linked article, the benchmark figure is the simply frame rate achieved by the test game (higher is better). OS 2.1 is roughly comparable to iOS Safari and the best Android results. OS 2.1 is significantly outperformed only by IE9, Opera and Chrome on the desktop, and by directCanvas on iOS (directCanvas is a commercial development kit for iOS and Android that uses a reduced form of HTML5 optimized for games).

So the 2.1 PB browser not only has great HTML5 compatibility, but also scores quite respectably on this HTML5 speed test.

[Thunderbuck]

That's actually very good news, since gaming performance should predict overall responsiveness.

I do know that later preview versions of 2.1 had higher html5test scores, so there's some chance the release will be even better.

[morlock_man]

Interesting that the iPad 3, with the A5X processor that was supposed to be twice as fast, doesn't outperform the beta 2.1 Playbook browser with their stock browser.

Also, the BB10 browser is beating everything but the Dolphin Engine Beta with a score of 447 vs 450 on html5test.com. All the desktop browsers are getting owned by mobile development.

[VerryBestr]

Interesting that the iPad 3, with the A5X processor that was supposed to be twice as fast, doesn't outperform the beta 2.1 Playbook browser with their stock browser. ...

Well, to be fair, while the PB 2.1 browser scores the same as Safari on the iPad 3 ("new iPad"), the iPad is pushing a lot more pixels. The previous iPad was 40% faster.

This is an interesting comparison, but it would be more interesting if it tested several different games which push different things (graphics, JavaScript, ...).

In any case, this shows that at least some developers at RIM have been busy and successful.

[deanrw1]

Im not running 2.1 and just ran the test. When it finished it gave me an average of 29fps, not 9fps

[morlock_man]

Well, to be fair, while the PB 2.1 browser scores the same as Safari on the iPad 3 ("new iPad"), the iPad is pushing a lot more pixels. The previous iPad was 40% faster.

This is an interesting comparison, but it would be more interesting if it tested several different games which push different things (graphics, JavaScript, ...).

In any case, this shows that at least some developers at RIM have been busy and successful.

Meh. Wasted pixels.