Image credit: Ars Technica

When Google introduced Android 2.2, the company announced that one of the biggest changes was a new Just In Time (JIT) compiler which dramatically sped up Javascript performance. That means that most third party apps run faster on Android 2.2 than Android 2.1, and many web sites with Javascript elements render more quickly.

But how does Google’s latest mobile operating system stack up against Apple’s? The folks at Ars Technica ran a set of benchmarks on a Google Nexus One running Android 2.2 Froyo and an iPhone 4 running iOS 4. The results? The Nexus One won… by a wide margin.

In fact, the Nexus One performed almost twice as well using the SunSpider benchmark, and more than 3 times better in the V8 test.

It’s worth keeping in mind that the differences aren’t just due to the software. While the Nexus One and iPhone 4 both have ARM-based processors, they each use very different chips, with the Nexus One powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU and the iPhone 4 using an Apple A4 processor. And of course, Javascript isn’t the only performance measure that matters. But it looks like if you visit a lot of Javascript-heavy web sites in your mobile browser, Android 2.2 might be a better bet than iOS 4.

Update: Chippy at CarryPad ran the SunSpider test on an Aava prototype phone running MeeGo Linux. His socre came in at 4,215.2ms, trouncing both the Nexus One and the iPhone 4. Of course, the Aava also has a 1.5GHz dual core Atom processor. While Javascript doesn’t take advantage of multicore processors, it’s tough to say whether it was the fast CPU or the fact that the device was running MeeGo that gave the Aava prototype the edge.

Oh, and just for kicks, I ran SunSpider on my 2nd generation iPod touch running iOS. It scored 30,708 — almost three times slower than the iPhone 4. Clearly the CPU is at least as important as the operating system.

Google is expected to unveil the details for the next version of its Android mobile operating system (code-named Froyo) soon. But Ian Douglas has already gotten his hands on a Google Nexus One with Android 2.2 Froyo. It supports Adobe Flash, and he reports that it runs very smoothly.

There’s a non-disclosure agreement preventing Douglas from spelling out all the new features found in Froyo. But he did share the results of some benchmarks. And it looks like the Nexus One with Android 2.2 managed to outperform the same device running Android 2.1 by a staggering 450 percent.

Clearly, the operating system doesn’t do anything to change the processor or other hardware. But Google is apparently offering a new Java compiler which appears to be blazing fast.

Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that every single thing you do with your phone will be 450% faster. It’s possible that some applications may not take advantage of the speed gains. And there’s a big difference between the speed with which a processor can calculate and the perceived speed for end users.

But as the folks at Android Police point out, an HTC Hero scores about 2MFLOPS using the Linpack benchmark. The Google Nexus One with Android 2.1 gets about 7 MFLOPS. And it’s one of the fastest Android powered phones on the market today. With Android 2.2, the Nexus One score jumps to 37-40 MFLOPs. It’s hard to imagine that kind of performance gain not making a huge difference in real and perceived speed.

The biggest gains are expected to be in apps that are not compiled in native code.