Rendering a mobile site in under 1 second

[BrightCandle]

There was a presentation posted on Hacker news a few days ago about how to make a website render in under 1 second on a mobile phone. I can't find the presentation but here is an article talking about the same sorts of changes that are necessary to make sites target under a second:

http://calendar.perfplanet.com/2012/make-your-mobile-pages-render-in-under-one-second/

I never get a web page on my mobile at anything near like seconds, I measure website loads in more like minutes. This idea that the network negotiation is a few seconds is hogwash as far as I can tell, the first load will be upwards of a minute for me. Even after the connection is going it still takes 30 seconds or so to find and download a site. It normally takes about 20 seconds to even get started and show that the site is even there (based on the progress bar being stuck at the left), let alone download the content and then render the site. Heck even rendering I would say is taking more than a second, its certainly not instant the cogs are clearly showing.

Performance on all the phones I have owned across a variety of networks has always sucked (Tmobile, three and on O2 with a Nexus One, a tmobile chinese phone and the Samsung Nexus). The idea that a website on my phone could ever load in seconds seems laughably far away, its 100x that right now. Is this just the UK network?

I currently use Chrome on android 4.2.2
UK(London) with O2 shows HSDPA:8 network type. Running on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus

 

[ChronoReverse]

I'm on LTE with my HTC One X and it loads and renders sites in a couple seconds.

LTE does have an advantage of lower latencies.

 

[Chapbass]

I'm on LTE with my HTC One X and it loads and renders sites in a couple seconds.

LTE does have an advantage of lower latencies.

Agreed. When my AT&T Galaxy Note II drops LTE occasionally and goes down to 4G its VERY noticeable (and really frustrating). LTE is a whole different level.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

part of this is browser dependent too no?

 

[Yuriman]

My GS2 loads this forum in under 1 second on 4G. Most sites load a bit slower but never more than 4 or 5 seconds.

 

[BrightCandle]

The presentation and the site linked are talking mostly about HSDPA and such networks as well as LTE. Supposedly 1 second is possible, but even a refresh of google takes far longer than that, of the order of 10 seconds for me.

I think these guys are smoking something if they think real world mobile latency is anything even remotely like the figures they are throwing about. Its much much worse than this.

 

[ChronoReverse]

For some reason I'm having a strong sense of deja vu.

Anyway,

The presentation and the site linked are talking mostly about HSDPA and such networks as well as LTE. Supposedly 1 second is possible, but even a refresh of google takes far longer than that, of the order of 10 seconds for me.

It takes 2 seconds to load this forum in Opera Mobile from the moment I press refresh.

On HSPDA (and only 2 bars of signal), it takes 4 seconds.

I'm thinking your network is just bad wherever it is you're located.

 

[Danimal1209]

I have a lumia 710 on tmobiles 4g (HSPA+ I think).

Pages load in just a couple seconds.

 

[Deeko]

If you have page loads in minutes on a modern phone, the problem is on your end. End of story. The absolute slowest page on my site, which is actually a desktop site and loads all of a users history from the database in a less than elegant fashion, loads in 5 seconds on my phone.

 

[Railgun]

No. Absolutely no. You're going to tell me that all carriers perform at optimal, and maximum speeds all day, every day? That latency is consistent across the board? That congestion doesn't happen? That signal strength is consistently at, say, -40db?

No, it's not. And therefore, no, it's not the phone.

 

[TheStu]

3 bars of Sprint LTE at work, I load Cracked.com's home page in 3 seconds from the time I push 'Go'. 4 seconds for Buzzfeed. 4 seconds for the Eddie Murphy wikipedia page.

Let's not talk about Sprint's 3G service.