Paul Beesley

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The iPhone browser appears to be king of the hill right now when it comes to browsing on mobile devices but just how close is it to being the full web experience? I decided to test its rendering capabilities when compared to some of the major desktop browsers. Read on, the results might surprise you!

Acid 2 Test

For some time now, the Acid 2 test has been used as the benchmark for CSS standards support. Several major browsers achieved support with Safari being the first in October 2005, followed closely by Konqueror and then Opera in the following year. Let’s see how the current versions of the browsers stack up:

As you can see, the iPhone, while not perfect, produces a decent rendering with just a few small defects. When you take into account that IE7 is the most widely used browser on the web, Mobile Safari suddenly seems very capable in comparison. After all, if IE7 is “good enough” to render most sites correctly, the iPhone ought to handle most pages just as well, if not better. The only browser here to score a perfect rendering was Firefox 3, though Apple’s desktop version of Safari (not pictured) also passes.

Strangely, Opera 9.51 has actually regressed on the Acid 2 result since 9.50 renders it correctly. Initially I thought it was a problem with my machine but clearing the cache and reinstalling gives the same result. Quite why this would be, I’m not sure. It’s unlikely that Opera would remove support for part of a web standard so perhaps this is a bug resulting from a recent change.

Acid 3 Test

Next up is Acid 3, the most demanding test of a browser’s capabilities. Whereas Acid 2 focused on CSS support, this new test is centered around ECMAScript and DOM handling and it tests several components vital to “Web 2.0″ functionality.

Incredible! Mobile Safari actually scores better on Acid 3 than the latest Firefox release by the narrowest of margins. Opera 9.51 is the most capable browser here with IE7 trailing behind with 12. IE8, due out late this year promises great improvements in standards support.

The Web. Mobile.

Apple and the Webkit team have worked very hard to really bring the full web onto the iPhone and for the most part, they’ve succeeded. Mobile Safari on iPhone 2.0 is a very capable platform for developers and it reduces the hassle developers face when targeting mobile devices. There’s still work to be done, however, particularly with rich media such as Flash and Quicktime support, and I look forward to seeing progress there in future.

Has Mobile Safari worked well for you? Are there websites that fail to behave? Post a comment and let us know!