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September 12th, 2009

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

Posted by Ed Burnette @ 6:03 pm

Categories: General, Web Browsers

Tags: Apple Safari, Battery, Web Browser, Battery Life, Engineering, Web Browsers, Internet, Ed Burnette

AnandTech just published an interesting set of test results that shows the browser you pick can have a significant effect on your portable computer’s battery life. Author Jarred Walton tested 5 major browsers on Windows:

  • IE8
  • Firefox 3.5.2 (with and without AdBlock)
  • Chrome 2
  • Opera (versions 9.64 and 10.0b3)
  • Safari 4

IE8 provided the best battery life overall on the two Intel and AMD laptops tested, and second best (behind Chrome 2) in the netbook test. But the real surprise was how badly Safari 4 performed. On the AMD notebook, using IE8 increased overall battery life by a whopping 33%. Jarred wrote:

“Outside of Safari 4, which was clearly the worst browser choice for battery life under Windows, the major browsers offer similar battery life.“

Poor Safari performance is being blamed on either a bad implementation of Adobe Flash, or inefficiencies in the code that does HTML parsing and rendering. Safari developers have not yet responded to the findings.

Ed BurnetteEd Burnette is a professional developer and author of several articles and books about computing including Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform, 2nd Edition. For disclosure of Ed's industry affiliations, click here or to view his full profile click here.

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  • Talkback
  • Most Recent of 56 Talkback(s)
Safari on Snow Leopard Sucks
I have Snow Leopard on two Mac's and both have issues with Safari running slow or crashing. I went back to Firefox 3.5 and have had no issues with it. Some claim different causes for Safari's problems... (Read the rest)
Posted by: jscott418 Posted on: 10/10/09 You are currently: a Guest | | Terms of Use
Firefox and Chrome, the best you can find  NeoGeneration | 09/12/09
They're working on it!  CobraA1 | 09/13/09
The irony is Chrome is based on WebKit. (nt)  People | 09/14/09
I agree about firefox but...  Ceridan | 09/14/09
Why was Opera tested?  James T. Kirk | 09/12/09
Nope  eMJayy | 09/12/09
RE: Tests show Safari 4  matthewm12 | 09/12/09
Can't asnwer that,  People | 09/14/09
Theory...  Ceridan | 09/14/09
that would be IE  doh123 | 09/14/09
Something's fishy  honeymonster | 09/12/09
Maybe competitors feeling the heat?  Mikael_z | 09/12/09
Anandtech has a lot of mac reviews and a dedicated mac section  NeoGeneration | 09/13/09
Anandtech is a trusted source  Ed BurnetteZDNet Moderator | 09/15/09
Here are some differences . . .  CobraA1 | 09/13/09
As a developer can I add  tonymcs@... | 09/13/09
Good points  honeymonster | 09/14/09
CPU/memory tradeoff  CobraA1 | 09/14/09
A word on flash  eMJayy | 09/12/09
10 or more?  CobraA1 | 09/13/09
. . . and a note on memory usage.  CobraA1 | 09/13/09
Re: Core2 quads and i7  Ed BurnetteZDNet Moderator | 09/15/09
RE: [crappy] Tests show Safari 4  matthew_maurice | 09/13/09
Build Quality ? Lol, what does that have to do  NeoGeneration | 09/13/09
Decent engineering does make a difference  zkiwi | 09/13/09
NOoouh!...  JCitizen | 09/14/09
debate about the data, not about character assasination.  crislevin | 09/13/09
Yes, it is very telling isn't it!  NonZealot | 09/13/09
Well...  zkiwi | 09/13/09
The road goes both ways  People | 09/14/09
Safari on Windows  betelgeuse68 | 09/13/09
Safari was never that good on Windows  CobraA1 | 09/13/09
It's there to rack up payments from Google  cquirke | 09/15/09
Safari has a closed list of two search engines, Google and Yahoo... Huh?  vulpine@... | 09/23/09
I only need long battery life on planes  HollywoodDog | 09/14/09
What a strange universe.  People | 09/14/09
Have you ever thought about...  vulpine@... | 09/14/09
Actually yes.  People | 09/14/09
In my own case,...  vulpine@... | 09/15/09
The real problem with battery life.  clareJ | 09/14/09
Safari 4 is horrible on a Mac, too.  aep528 | 09/14/09
Your Mac experience isn't reflecting mine  Aragorn_z | 09/14/09
Re: Your Mac experience isn't reflecting mine  aep528 | 09/14/09
Safari 4 on OSX is pretty good  doh123 | 09/16/09
Get rid of Skype aep528...  i8thecat | 09/17/09
My brother has run for years...  JCitizen | 09/20/09
Safari on Windows is for testing only ...  Ensorceled | 09/14/09
Safari 4 on OS X...  wright_is | 09/14/09
RE: Tests show Safari 4  pete shaw | 09/15/09
The lot of you seem to be overlooking something.  vulpine@... | 09/15/09
That sounds anti-competitive to me  NonZealot | 09/15/09
??????  doh123 | 09/16/09
Did any of the laptops have a dedicated GPU or high end IGP?  nix_hed | 09/16/09
My turion x64  JCitizen | 09/17/09
RE: Tests show Safari 4  cybero_designs | 09/28/09
Safari on Snow Leopard Sucks  jscott418 | 10/10/09

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