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# About those "Chrome on Android is faster than Safari on the iPhone" claims
- URL: https://birchtree.me/blog/about-those-chrome-on-android-is-faster-than-safari-on-the-iphone-claims/
- Published: 2026-03-27T00:38:05.000Z
- Updated: 2026-03-27T00:42:21.000Z
- Author: Matt Birchler

This week, [Google posted](https://blog.chromium.org/2026/03/android-sets-new-record-for-mobile-web.html?ref=birchtree.me) that Chrome on Android was now notably faster at browsing the web than Safari on iOS. This led to the bold line in the post:

> **Android is now the fastest mobile platform for web browsing.**

Likely due to corporate lameness, they didn't put specific labels on their bar chart, they just identified that 3 Android OEMs have devices that performed better on the [Speedometer 3.1 benchmark](https://browserbench.org/Speedometer3.1/?ref=birchtree.me) than some "competing mobile phone platform". Here's their chart for posterity:

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/31/25312b2a-2d5b-4d01-ba92-e6755efc202c/content/images/2026/03/image-7.png)

A bar chart without proper labels is going to raise some eyebrows, including John Gruber's, who [posted](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/03/26/google-brags-about-android-web-browser-benchmarks?ref=birchtree.me):

> Name the devices or shut up.

I happen to be someone who has the fastest iPhone and the fastest Android phone from the most popular Android maker in the US: the iPhone 17 Pro and Galaxy S26 Ultra.

I guess today is a day of benchmarks for me, because I literally [just posted a bunch of benchmarks](https://birchtree.me/blog/macbook-neo-the-benchmarks/), including GeekBench scores which showed the Galaxy matching the iPhone in single-core, and beating it in multi-core.

But yeah, I get the same results as Google did, although the iPhone scored a bit lower on my device for some reason (this is the average score across 5 tests on each device with a short cool down between runs).

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/31/25312b2a-2d5b-4d01-ba92-e6755efc202c/content/images/2026/03/image-8.png)

Here are the individual results if you wanted to see them all.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/31/25312b2a-2d5b-4d01-ba92-e6755efc202c/content/images/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-26-at-19.02.21@2x.png)

It's been a while of iPhone speed dominance, but it seems Qualcomm has more than caught up in raw performance. iPhones obviously are still outstanding, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are plenty of ways that Apple's chips are great that can't be shown easily on benchmarks like this. As I keep saying, maybe it's time Apple fans stop obsessing over benchmarks like they're Windows fans in the 2000s. Benchmark wins are a nice bonus if your platform is on top, but it's probably not the actual reason you use that platform.