UC Browser 9.8 Slower Than Opera Mini, Says Study

An independent software testing services firm has announced that Opera Mini performs better than UC Browser 9.8, according to a statement from Opera. Cigniti Technologies, the firm that compared the two browsers, claims to have found that Opera Mini browser performs better when loading "four of five leading websites on Android".

The tests are claimed to show that Google, Facebook, Wikipedia and Yahoo loaded "significantly faster" on Opera Mini when compared to UC Browser 9.8 on both 2G and 3G networks. The report said UC Browser 9.8 loaded YouTube faster on 2G networks, when compared to Opera Mini. In terms of overall performance, the report said Opera Mini was better than UC Browser 9.8 - thanks to faster load times.

The report also said that Opera Mini opens Facebook 34 percent faster on a 3G network and 27 percent faster on a 2G network, when compared to UC Browser 9.8. Cigniti Technologies' report is based on tests performed on a Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 smartphone running Android 4.4.2 KitKat. Five websites were loaded on both browsers on the same smartphone.

These websites are: Google, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and Yahoo. Each of these websites were opened 250 times each on both browsers on Airtel's 2G and 3G network. The report said the signal strength was high when the tests were conducted. "The cache and history of each browser was cleared before every iteration and the 'Page Load Time' i.e. the time taken to load the page and 'Data Download Size' i.e. size of the page data which got downloaded on the mobile browser was captured for all the iterations," the report said.