Adding Vellamo to our Mobile Benchmark Suite -Six Android Phones Tested

For a while now we've been keeping track of mobile browser performance using two relatively popular JavaScript heavy benchmarks that are a regular fixation in our smartphone reviews. If you've read any of those reviews, you should immediately be able to name them - SunSpider and RightWare's BrowserMark. Tracking JavaScript performance thus far has helped us codify and track SoC performance, but really understanding and quantifying overall browsing smoothness has remained a somewhat more daunting task. Moreover, JavaScript performance is just one facet of many that contribute to the user's perception of browsing speed.
Real web browsing performance is a unique combination of system performance, the Android browser itself, and what contributions or customizations (if any) the OEM has made in the shipping browser build. This is to say nothing of the numerous third party browsers out there. Qualcomm's Innovation Center recently made public a tool for gauging overall browser performance that it has used for a while to checkpoint and gauge performance in house and in collaboration with OEMs. We've used a subtest or two from it in a few reviews already, and it's named Vellamo.

Left to right: T-Mobile SGS2, Motorola Atrix, AT&T SGS2, HTC Sensation, LG Optimus 3D, Xiaomi Mi-One