Large webpages: the Lumia 521's only real weakness

[hasopinions]

Don't get me wrong, the phone is a great value, but I wish it had 1GB of RAM.

Trying to load larger, more complex desktop sites on the browser I find to be frustrating at times, especially after a few pages.
Again, the Lumia 521 is WAY better than similarly spec'd Android phones on such websites, and I wouldn't discourage someone
from buying it if they only need to do moderate browsing in a typical day.

Clearly there's thrashing to disk in a way that higher end phones with 1GB or 2GB of RAM don't have.

Every other application use I find just as fast as my Android Nexus 4, sometimes even faster.

 

[SlantNGo]

Agreed. I find the best browser to be UC Browser, and the only annoying thing is that large webpages cause it to display a temporary "clearing up memory" video that takes about 5 seconds before it loads the page.

 

[Aren Clegg]

you guys have to remember we have a low end wp8 phone with only 512 megs of ram. You can only stuff so much into that memory at a time. And also it depends if youre using a cell connection or wifi,

 

[SlantNGo]

you guys have to remember we have a low end wp8 phone with only 512 megs of ram. You can only stuff so much into that memory at a time. And also it depends if youre using a cell connection or wifi,

I understand that but my basis for comparison is my iPod Touch 2G with 128 MB RAM. While Safari on that iPod Touch 2G would struggle mightily with large webpages, Opera Mini rendered them like a champ. On WP8, it seems UC Browser is the best overall browser, but it has that annoying "clearing up memory" issue every once in awhile, and IE keeps reloading tabs.

 

[CopaCC]

Opera Mini runs everything through Opera's servers, which compresses the graphics and such. That will make it load faster on lower-end phones and slower connections.

 

[SlantNGo]

Opera Mini runs everything through Opera's servers, which compresses the graphics and such. That will make it load faster on lower-end phones and slower connections.

Yep too bad it's not available for Windows Phone. Know of any good "cloud browsers" for WP? The only one I tried was Nokia Xpress and wasn't too impressed.

 

[emagius]

UC Browser normally uses Internet Explorer/Trident behind the scenes, but the "speed browsing" setting does the cloud browsing thing. Unfortunately, page layout and usability in that mode are absolutely horrendous compared to Opera Mini.

The majority of Windows Phone 8 devices have 512 MB of RAM -- it's absurd that Microsoft hasn't optimized IE/Trident to be able to handle routine web browsing on those phones.

 

[SlantNGo]

UC Browser normally uses Internet Explorer/Trident behind the scenes, but the "speed browsing" setting does the cloud browsing thing. Unfortunately, page layout and usability in that mode are absolutely horrendous compared to Opera Mini.

The majority of Windows Phone 8 devices have 512 MB of RAM -- it's absurd that Microsoft hasn't optimized IE/Trident to be able to handle routine web browsing on those phones.

Agreed. I still use UC Browser mainly because it will keep multiple tabs open in memory. Most of the time I only use 2, not 5 or 6 like some people, but not having to wait for a reload when switching tabs is nice.