Outdated performance perceptions driving your mobile strategy?

Looking back, there was a time when mobile specific apps were necessary. Browser technology wasn’t quite there, and the first smartphones just didn’t have enough oomph. But we have come a long way since then …

Let’s look at the iPhone. Since the first release in 2007 to the release of the iPhone6 last year, according to Apple, speed has increased 50x. Most independent reports say this is more or less correct. If we consider just this improvement, something that used to take 15 second would now take 0.3 seconds. Just that alone makes a huge difference.

Browsers have improved too. It turns out also by a pretty huge amount. In less than two years from Jan 2010, Kraken javascript benchmarks shows improvement from 29,000 to 2000 ms. The rate of improvement was less dramatic in the last couple of years, but it is currently around 1000ms, making it overall about 30x faster since 2010. Again, considering this improvement in insolation, something that used to take 15 seconds would now take 0.5 seconds.

These two improvements however are additive. They collectively provide an overall speed improvement of 1500x. To put that in perspective, if something used to take an unacceptable 15 seconds back in 2007, it would now take a delightful 0.01 seconds.

But let’s play devil’s advocate and consider that Apple could be exaggerating a little, and maybe the javascript benchmark conditions were too ideal. Let’s say the improvement was only 1000x. That 15 seconds would still now be a lightening fast 0.015 seconds.

Do you still want to create a desktop application, then rewrite for iOS and again for Android?

SmartClient allows you to write just once for all devices: