I’ve been running these tests on and off for months with different browsers. On my Pixel 8 Pro, the different Firefox variants are all more or less the same (which is to say tremendous battery hogs). I also tried with Ublock Origin enabled and it didn’t make an appreciable difference.
Actually, refresh rate isn’t a factor! I tested with smooth display off on the 8 Pro and the power consumption was roughly the same.
It’s worth noting that the numbers I got from Battery Historian are the app’s power consumption alone. It tracks display/system power consumption separately.
Tests on however many devices you’re comfortable with would be super appreciated!!
do you get any meaningful difference in the browser engine family? Like between Chromium, Brave and Vivaldi for example?
All those examples are Chromium derived, and all have more or less identical battery characteristics. Some may score slightly higher on benchmarks than others, but they all consume roughly the same amount of power.
I actually did manage to pass it along to Firefox’s CTO as part of their recent Reddit AMA! They indicated they’re investigating power consumption in general, so I hope my work is useful to them.
did you clear history and data from your Android install since it sounds like you’d normally use that?
I didn’t for the Chrome/Firefox comparison I did in my post, but I rarely use either browser as a default, so I doubt it would have a huge impact.
I’m curious to know the impact of ad-blockers
I’ve tested a ton of Chromium derivatives with built-in adblocking (e.g. Brave, Vivaldi, Cromite), and all of them were substantially the same as Chrome. Firefox with uBlock Origin seemed to be mostly the same, but I admit that impression is anecdotal - I haven’t done a direct comparison.
Either way, I don’t think adblocking is bad, so if you want to block ads go for it.
Now compare Chrome with Firefox with a bunch of privacy and adblock extensions ;)
I have! IIRC, Firefox doesn’t see a particularly large impact (for better or worse) with uBlock Origin installed, though I haven’t run a direct comparison in a while. Adblocking is great, but I wouldn’t hold up better battery life as a guaranteed benefit.
try it on a device with an up-to-date chip that actually has some processing power and see that there would be no long term difference.
First of all: thanks to some fantastic community testers, we do know now that Firefox runs far better on Qualcomm chips. It’s still a little worse on battery relative to Chrome, but compared to Tensor it’s night and day.
Second: I think this attitude is too dismissive. Firefox running best on the latest Qualcomm flagship doesn’t change the fact that it runs atrociously on Pixels. I’m a big fan of Firefox, and I want it to run well for the largest set of users possible - including Pixel users! Hopefully, shining a light on areas where Firefox falls behind can help the engineering team close the gap not just on Pixels but on all devices.
I made a tool to measure the battery impact of different Android web browsers - here's what I learned!
Howdy, Android nerds!...