iPhone OS 2.0 twice as fast at JavaScript

The current iPhone's relatively poor JavaScript has been a point of lament for users experiencing slow rendering of AJAX pages and a virtual inability to use JavaScript-heavy, Web-based games. With the latest builds of iPhone OS 2.0, however, Apple has dramatically boosted JavaScript performance. While the new MobileSafari's performance still doesn't rival that of contemporary desktop browsers, the increased JavaScript quickness will aid significantly in the rendering of some Webmail interfaces and other interactive sites.

Prior testing of iPhone OS 1.x's JavaScript performance using Celtic Kane's benchmarks revealed performance 30 times slower than that of a 1.83 GHz MacBook Pro, with iPhone-generated test times in excess of 9000 ms on average. Subsequent builds of iPhone OS 2.0 completed the benchmarks routine in just over 6000 ms. The latest build of iPhone OS 2.0, which thought to be near-final, turns in times of just under 4500 ms -- double the performance of iPhone OS 1.x.

iPhone OS 2.0 uses an updated version of WebKit, numbered 525.18, to render pages in MobileSafari.

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