Samsung Galaxy Nexus & Ice Cream Sandwich Review

The Browser

The improvements to the Android web browser are some of the most noticeable in Ice Cream Sandwich. Browser performance both in JavaScript rendering and web page scrolling is worlds better than in Gingerbread. We've already explained why scrolling is smoother (full OpenGL ES render path), while the js performance improvements come courtesy of a newer V8 rendering engine in ICS.

The browser in 4.x also includes essentially everything that made the browser in 3.x smooth as well. As opposed to the Android 2.x browser's immediate rendering system - which would redraw the page in its entirety as you zoomed and panned around and seem choppy as a result - Android 3.x/4.x now render tiles into a backing store for webpages. This is the same system that iOS, webOS, and Samsung's custom browsers use, and as a result panning and translating around is now just as smooth as it is in those platforms. To be totally honest, this is probably one of the single largest and most welcome improvements over Android 2.x because of how dramatic the difference is.

 
 Android 4.0 browser with visual indicator enabled (left), debug settings (right)

In Android 4.0 you can actually go inside the debug settings for the browser (enter about:debug into the address bar, enter, then a new settings pane emerges) and enable or disable OpenGL assisted rendering for the browser. With it off, it feels just like 2.x's choppy stock browser, and with it on, it feels buttery smooth like 3.x. The difference is beyond dramatic. This is actually a feature that was present in Android 3.x as well. 

A look at SunSpider and Browsermark performance tells us all we need to know about how the JavaScript V8 engine performance has changed under ICS:

While companies like Motorola and Samsung backported parts of the Honeycomb browser to their own Gingerbread browsers, the stock Gingerbread browser needed work. ICS modernizes the Android web browser and finally removes the need for third party customizations, at least from a performance standpoint.

Gingerbread vs. Ice Cream Sandwich
	Gingerbread	Ice Cream Sandwich
Browser

The ICS browser is still WebKit based and uses a much newer version of WebKit than what you'll find in Android 2.3.6. Compared to the latest Honeycomb browser however there's not all that much difference in version number. The ICS browser does still use an older version of WebKit than Mobile Safari in iOS 5.0.1:

HTML5 compatibility is fairly similar to Honeycomb, although a significant improvement compared to Gingerbread. If you haven't had any experience with Honeycomb tablets, the ICS browser will feel like like brand new technology.

Performance and compatibility are obvious improvements, however there's much more to the ICS browser. For starters it implements tabbed browsing, a feature that has been available on Honeycomb but not in Gingerbread. Given the small screen size, tabs aren't immediately visible but are instead switched between after hitting the tabs button. The process makes sense and thanks to GPU accelerated drawing, scrolling through tabs is extremely smooth.

 
The normal desktop UA switcher (left), More options under developer settings (right)

Google added quick user agent switching to ask for desktop versions of websites vs. mobile by default through a checkbox under settings. Enabling the option changes the browser's UA string from representing itself as a mobile Safari browser to Chrome 11. There's also a menu inside debug settings to change your user agent (UAString) to look like the desktop, iPhone, iPad, Nexus One with Froyo, or a Xoom with Honeycomb. 

Prior to ICS, the browser was a serious limitation of the Android platform on smartphones - it was choppy, and something OEMs continually replaced with their own (sometimes worse, sometimes better) browser. Granted you could always download and replace the browser with one of your own choosing, but for the mainstream user the Gingerbread browser was a problem. In ICS the browser is a blessing to use. It's very fast, smooth and compatible. We've had no problems using the Honeycomb browser and the same can be thankfully said about the evolution of it in ICS.