Tests show Safari 4 "clearly the worst" for battery life

[clevin]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=1361
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3636

test conducted by anandtech

On the AMD notebook, using IE8 increased overall battery life by a whopping 33%.

Poor Safari 4 under Windows is again the worst solution for battery life, perhaps because it doesn't handle Flash content as well as the other browsers. CPU usage is definitely higher under Safari 4 with our test websites, and it trails the best option by 23%.

AMD machine

Intel machine

netbook, this result is especially astonishing

 

[Compile 'em all]

bad implementation of Adobe Flash

Bad is a understatement.

 

[stridemat]

Flash does make my fans spin up which would decrease the battery a bit, however I still get 5 hours battery life out of my 08' macbook using Safari so it hasn't really be a problem.

Doesn't Safari render pages faster than any other browser allegedly?? Who needs longer battery life to browse website when you can render all the webpages you need faster so have to spend last time doing it.

 

[clevin]

Bad is a understatement.

1. this is a windows platform test
2. they are talking about safari handling flash badly, they didn't actually discuss how adobe flash is itself good or bad.

I should have quoted original text from anandtech..rather than zdnet.

Flash does make my fans spin up which would decrease the battery a bit, however I still get 5 hours battery life out of my 08' macbook using Safari so it hasn't really be a problem.

Doesn't Safari render pages faster than any other browser allegedly?? Who needs longer battery life to browse website when you can render all the webpages you need faster so have to spend last time doing it.

nobody says anything about safari rendering page faster, only definitive test is showing it handles js faster, on the millisecond scale. which u probably can't tell.

again, this is a windows platform test.

 

[kindablue09]

Not really that surprised. Safari 4 gums up my powerbook... Although I should probably upgrade the ram from 512

... Next paycheck I will

 

[ChrisA]

Safari is optimized for speed. They make if fast by finding "things to do" with the CPU. It is counter intuitive but the programs that appear fast tend to use more CPU and RAM. For example it might be rendering things in the background that you __might__ look at. The work is wasted if you don't but it makes if fast if you do look.

If you want longer battery life you have to give up on these kinds of speed optimizations.

OK, they could offer the user a choice "speed or battery life" and even force the choice based on if the power connector is plugged in. But it appears they just went after speed.

 

[nick9191]

That's on Windows, who cares.

On the Mac, Safari uses the least resources of any browser, at least in mine and most users experience. Making Safari clearly the best for battery life.

 

[clevin]

On the Mac, Safari uses the least resources of any browser, at least in mine and most users experience. Making Safari clearly the best for battery life.

I haven't seen any CPU test on macs. and memory tests shows safari is using largest amount of RAMs among released browsers.

better for battery on mac? somebody might need to test that then make a judgment. Clearly u haven't.

Safari is optimized for speed. They make if fast by finding "things to do" with the CPU. It is counter intuitive but the programs that appear fast tend to use more CPU and RAM. For example it might be rendering things in the background that you __might__ look at. The work is wasted if you don't but it makes if fast if you do look.

thats called pre-fetch, many browsers have been dong that, or was doing that (firefox, chrome, etc), it can not be the reason for the test result.

The article mentioned poor handling of flash is a big cause, they have some test results to support the speculation.