[kennyliu]

The comments in the recent poll made me wonder why people would prefer the stock Playbook browser to Dolphin HD had it been released natively. Some suggested that, even on Android, Dolphin is laggy, slow, and buggy. I don't know, maybe I am extremely lucky, but I have used Dolphin on my Android phones and tablets for almost two years now and have yet to encounter any issue.

Anyway, I thought a video is worth a million words and here is a comparison of the two browsers (sorry for the video quality).

On the left is the HP Touchpad with CyanogenMod 9 Alpha 2 (still very buggy). The specs on the two tablets are comparable, with the only advantage of the Touchpad being a higher clock SoC (1.2GHz vs 1Ghz). But many regard the TI OMAP in the Playbook to be a better chip than the Qualcom in the Touchpad.

[YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku4jG6VtecU[/YT]

[kennyliu]

If you have time to watch the second half of the video, I have also demoed some of the features of Dolphin HD, which I would love to see implemented in the PB Browser. Namely:

- In-browser gesture controls (e.g. go to page, go to the top, new tab, call for bookmarks list, etc.)
- Search on page
- Smart search bar (URL suggestions)
- Save/share page
- Add-on support (Web to PDF is demoed as an example, but there are lots of other useful/interesting add-ons for Dolphin)

Unfortunately, I couldn't demo the Sonar functionality (Siri-like voice control) as the Android ROM on the Touchpad is still lacking microphone support.

[kennyliu]

Based on my experience with the two browsers, I can assess them as follows (on a scale of 1 to 10):

Startup speed:
Dolphin - 7
PB - 3

Overall speed (page load/rendeing):
Dolphin - 8
PB - 8

Features and functionality:
Dolphin - 8
PB - 2 (very barebones)

Stability:
Dolphin - 7
PB - 4

Flash support (i.e. "full web" ):
Dolphin - 7 (Flash player asks which of the two browsers to use. This can be solved by removing the Android stock browser)
PB - 8

In summary, I can only hope that RIM will fix the browser in the next OS update and will roll out new browser features for us to enjoy.

[Dim-Ize]

Enjoyed the video. My first time watching the Dolphin Browser - I've always considered myself to be content with the PB native browser. After watching - I think I'll give it a whirl.

I love the gestures within the browser, including the page up / down. I just didn't like the idea of running in the Android environmnet for browsing on my PB. As far as I know, it isn't a native app.

Thanks for making the video and providing your assessment. However, I can't say that it is a perfect side by side, but a very accurate one. If we could see that test performed on side by side / freshly booted PlayBook's - that would would best.

Great job. Thanks for sharing!

[KermEd]

Some of this (jump to top/bottom of page), Tab recovery and find-on-page I added to my browser for the PB as well (Secure Browser). I rely on Tab Recovery in the browser a lot. Plus i added commands so you can type in "wiki playbook" to lookup the playbook in wikipedia or "ebayca playbook" to quickly look up ebay sales.

But I know why RIM didnt impliment these, the webkit is not stable and the more layers added he more likely it is to have problems.

[kennyliu]

Some of this (jump to top/bottom of page), Tab recovery and find-on-page I added to my browser for the PB as well (Secure Browser). I rely on Tab Recovery in the browser a lot. Plus i added commands so you can type in "wiki playbook" to lookup the playbook in wikipedia or "ebayca playbook" to quickly look up ebay sales.

But I know why RIM didnt impliment these, the webkit is not stable and the more layers added he more likely it is to have problems.

Great to know that some the features can be had in Secure Browser. I'll give it a try.

As for stability, the video speaks for itself. Besides, as I mentioned, I have yet to encounter any problem with Dolphin (besides an issue where it rotates to the portrait mode in some very rare instances).

[kennyliu]

Enjoyed the video. My first time watching the Dolphin Browser - I've always considered myself to be content with the PB native browser. After watching - I think I'll give it a whirl.

I love the gestures within the browser, including the page up / down. I just didn't like the idea of running in the Android environmnet for browsing on my PB. As far as I know, it isn't a native app.

Thanks for making the video and providing your assessment. However, I can't say that it is a perfect side by side, but a very accurate one. If we could see that test performed on side by side / freshly booted PlayBook's - that would would best.

Great job. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks Dim-Ize. Both devices were freshly booted with history and cache cleaned prior to the test.

Edit: Don't expect the PB version of Dolphin to work as well. After all it's emulated.

[Willard814]

I just downloaded and tried to use the Dolphin browser and it is super slow! IMO the program seems arcaic and cumbersom. Why on earth would anyone get rid of the native PB browser for the piece of crap and yeah I said it! The dolphin browser is garbage!

[kennyliu]

I just downloaded and tried to use the Dolphin browser and it is super slow! IMO the program seems arcaic and cumbersom. Why on earth would anyone get rid of the native PB browser for the piece of crap and yeah I said it! The dolphin browser is garbage!

It is garbage because it's a non-native app. You are running an operating system within an operating system, so you can't expect it to run as it does natively.

But if it was developed natively, I'd say most people would switch. Because the PB browser is archaic as far as features/functionality is concerned.

Dolphin scores a solid 4.7/5 with almost half a million votes (just for the HD version) in Google Play. If the PB browser was ported to Android, I suspect its score would be 0.1/5

[ad19]

This is not a good comparison. Of course Dolphin browser is going to run well on a tablet running Android natively. If you want to truly compare the browser experience on the PB you need to get two of them and have one run the native browser and the other run Dolphin. When Dolphin is run on the PB in the Android player it is horrible compared to the native browser.

[kennyliu]

This is not a good comparison. Of course Dolphin browser is going to run well on a tablet running Android natively. If you want to truly compare the browser experience on the PB you need to get two of them and have one run the native browser and the other run Dolphin. When Dolphin is run on the PB in the Android player it is horrible compared to the native browser.

Agree, but the purpose of this post was to:

- Address some claims that Dolphin is inherently slow and buggy compared to the PB browser.

- Show the features that the PB browser is severely lacking and the direction RIM can go to further improve the stock browser.

Anyway, there is nothing wrong in comparing browsers on two different platforms. People do this all the time

[goku_vegeta]

The comments in the recent poll made me wonder why people would prefer the stock Playbook browser to Dolphin HD had it been released natively. Some suggested that, even on Android, Dolphin is laggy, slow, and buggy. I don't know, maybe I am extremely lucky, but I have used Dolphin on my Android phones and tablets for almost two years now and have yet to encounter any issue.

Anyway, I thought a video is worth a million words and here is a comparison of the two browsers (sorry for the video quality).

On the left is the HP Touchpad with CyanogenMod 9 Alpha 2 (still very buggy). The specs on the two tablets are comparable, with the only advantage of the Touchpad being a higher clock SoC (1.2GHz vs 1Ghz). But many regard the TI OMAP in the Playbook to be a better chip than the Qualcom in the Touchpad.

Great comparison to watch

I personally use the native PlayBook browser because for me I prefer the layout and even though the Dolphin browser has more features, I wouldn't make use of them.


Great video Thank you for sharing

[Willard814]

It is garbage because it's a non-native app. You are running an operating system within an operating system, so you can't expect it to run as it does natively.

So in other words it only runs well on a Android devices? Thanks for proving my point if I own a PB why in the would I want an app that only runs well on an Android device? Secondly kennyliu you are OK in my book my friend, but what is the purpose of this post? Am I suppose to go out and buy an Android device? I have to tell you my cousin bought a Andriod tablet for her 5 year old daughter and I was totally unimpressed. In fact I became frustrated when trying to load "Angry Birds" and gave up citing that the said tablet and OS sucked big time! I'll stick with the native browser until something else comes along that actually works on QNX and it would have to work better than the orginal!

[SifJar]

This is not a good comparison. Of course Dolphin browser is going to run well on a tablet running Android natively. If you want to truly compare the browser experience on the PB you need to get two of them and have one run the native browser and the other run Dolphin. When Dolphin is run on the PB in the Android player it is horrible compared to the native browser.

That's the point of the comparison. To show that Dolphin is a good browser, which is comparable to the PB's native browser, when run natively.

[3Athlete]

what is the purpose of this post?

Agree, but the purpose of this post was to:

- Address some claims that Dolphin is inherently slow and buggy compared to the PB browser.

- Show the features that the PB browser is severely lacking and the direction RIM can go to further improve the stock browser.

Anyway, there is nothing wrong in comparing browsers on two different platforms. People do this all the time

Good video comparison. Nice to see. I use dolphin browser here and there. I would use it all the time hands down if it was native. The plethora of features is wonderful.

The emulator thing doesn't fly, SNES9x emulates just fine

[samab]

Did you overclock your TouchPad? Very rare to find someone who installed CyanogenMod on their TouchPad and not OC it to something like 1.8 GHz.

The Playbook pulled more complex pages (yahoo has a video), pulled more ads (imdb).

The Playbook is also faster in the more complex websites (engadget and youtube).

[kennyliu]

Did you overclock your TouchPad? Very rare to find someone who installed CyanogenMod on their TouchPad and not OC it to something like 1.8 GHz.

The Playbook pulled more complex pages (yahoo has a video), pulled more ads (imdb).

The Playbook is also faster in the more complex websites (engadget and youtube).

No overclocking. Stock 1.2 Ghz, which benchmarks even worse than the TI OMAP at 1 Ghz.

As for the truly complex pages (XDA Developers and Evry), the Playbook couldn't even handle them (crashed).

Btw, some (only some) of the pages indeed had different content pulled. That's because Dolphin was set to the Desktop Agent mode (full desktop mode).

[samab]

No overclocking. Stock 1.2 Ghz, which benchmarks even worse than the TI OMAP at 1 Ghz.

As for the truly complex pages, the Playbook couldn't even handle them (crashed).

Btw, some (only some) of the pages indeed had different content pulled. That's because Dolphin was set to the Desktop Agent mode (full desktop mode).

It could have crashed because the Playbook has a more recent webkit drop and those websites have badly written html5 codes. There are a few html5 web apps that worked perfectly on Playbook 1.0.8 but crash on Playbook 2.0.0.

[kennyliu]

It could have crashed because the Playbook has a more recent webkit drop and those websites have badly written html5 codes. There are a few html5 web apps that worked perfectly on Playbook 1.0.8 but crash on Playbook 2.0.0.

That's possible. I hope the PB browser will get the fix soon. Otherwise, it is very unstable. At least, in my case.

[samab]

Just check on w3c's validation site, the Evry webpage has over 31 errors and 2 warnings and XDA Developers webpage has 158 Errors and 110 warnings.

[kennyliu]

Just check on w3c's validation site, the Evry webpage has over 31 errors and 2 warnings and XDA Developers webpage has 158 Errors and 110 warnings.

OK, that exactly proves the fact that the PB browser is less stable than other browsers.

[samab]

OK, that exactly proves the fact that the PB browser is less stable than other browsers.

Those are badly written websites, not RIM's fault that they are badly written.

[kennyliu]

Those are badly written websites, not RIM's fault that they are badly written.

Dejavu. I already had a similar discussion.

Great logic.

As we speak, I'm sending an email to XDA and numerous other places asking them to kindly rewrite their websites because the PB browser can't handle them (whereas all other browsers don't have any problems with the sites) and it's not RIM's fault

[varunsain]

Everyone's not trying to set a benchmark goal when they want to use a browser.. The pb browser is just fine IMO.. Ofcourse it's missing a few features but other browsers are more about the add-ons which makes it feel cluttered and distracting even overwhelming on the small device.

Also, it's very good that the pb browser has 0 fault tolerance for errors in websites. Atleast we realize who's taking the efforts to build a clean website.

Just nitpicking on RIM as usual. All feature requests in here are just to make the PB more into an Android or iOS device but I feel the PB has a character of it's own. Like everytime I get fed up and do a security wipe.. I'm left with a few handful of things on my PB and that's when I feel this device is really complete. I just got to ease down on the feeling of wanting everything and doing nothing.

[rickgainsmith]

Someone posted turning off the permission for Allowing website to access my location, does the help speed the browser or is it just an illusion?

Edit: Above makes no difference or slower.

Javascript! Turning it off is like adding a turbo to the browser. Try it!