Take this one with a grain of salt as it goes against all other speed tests we've heard about. Strangeloop Networks says the Samsung Galaxy S3 loads pages 9% faster than the new iPhone 5, the median web page takes more than 11 seconds to load for both Android and iPhone, and LTE (Long Term Evolution) is faster than 3G.

These were among the findings in a new report by Strangeloop Networks, "2012 State of Mobile Ecommerce Performance," a study that measure the mobile user experience over 3G and LTE networks. The report was based on tests conducted in July and September 2012 on six devices: the iPhone 4, iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S smartphone, Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone, iPad 2, and Samsung Galaxy tablet.

The tests measured the page load times of 200 leading ecommerce sites, as ranked by Alexa.com. Highlights of the key findings include:

° The iPad beat the Galaxy tablet on 3G performance, while the Galaxy S3 phone surpassed the iPhone 5 on LTE. Over 3G, pages loaded 22% faster on the iPad than on the Galaxy tablet. Over LTE, pages loaded 9% faster on the Galaxy S3 than on the iPhone 5.

° The median home page took 11+ seconds to load on both iPhone and Android over 3G. At 11.8 seconds for the Galaxy S and 11.5 for iPhone, the median 3G load times for the two most popular mobile operating systems were 40% slower than the median desktop load time (7.1 seconds).

° LTE was 27% faster than 3G, but fell short of industry claims. Some industry experts have stated that LTE networks are, on average, 10 times faster than 3G.
° The average load time for pages on 3G was 11.7 seconds, compared to 8.5 seconds for LTE -- a significant difference but not of the magnitude predicted by LTE proponents.

"These results tell us that, although LTE networks have improved mobile performance, pages are still far too slow," says Strangeloop CEO Jonathan Bixby. "The latest mobile user surveys tell us that two out of three mobile shoppers expect sites to load in 4 seconds or less. A page that takes 8.5 seconds to load over LTE is still falling short of user expectations."

You can download a free copy of the "2012 State of Mobile Ecommerce Performance" at: http://www.strangeloopnetworks.com/state-of-mobile-ecommerce-performance .