[Nexus One General] big_adventure:
Do you want a source? Google posted a video showing a Nexus at 2.2, a Nexus at 2.1 and an iPad all hitting the same sites. The Nexus on 2.2 was much faster than either of them. Apple has never shown a head's up between their kit and others (and, to be fair, they don't really need to, as they are close enough to market leaders that they don't need to compare anything).

And, you are in luck! I happen to have (as already presented in this post) an iPad, a Nexus (now on 2.2, previously on 2.1 and on various CM's), and iPhone 3GS, a Motorola Milestone (now on 2.1, previously on 2.0 and 2.0.1), and a third-gen iPod Touch (32gig).

The Nexus on 2.2 is BY FAR the fastest of the group in the following tasks:

1. Scrolling between homescreens (I have LauncherPro)

2. Web browsing - and it's not even really close. I posted SunSpider results earlier in the thread, and they bear out. On either WiFi or 3G, the N1 on 2.2 is the fastest of the systems. It renders much, much faster, scrolls faster and just does everything better on the web. Plus, Android does something that no iDevice does - automatic text reformatting. When you go to a non-mobile site on an iThingy, you can tap to zoom and pinch to zoom, but the text will NOT reformat, meaning that you have to do the scroll-dance side to side as well as up and down to read everything if 1-column width is too small to read under conditions. On the Android devices, you just have to double-tap and the page reformats the text to make it one column wide. I use this feature every day, and once you start using it, you just can't go back. This isn't much of a problem in most cases on an iPad (it's big), but it makes browsing painful on the iPhone/Pod touch.

3. Loading and running Flash content - ;-)

4. Going from reading or writing a page or an email to checking something in another application, like a unit converter, a dictionary, etc. and then back. That takes less than a second on Android. On iPhone today, you have to close one to open another, and then close the other to go back to the first. Yes, this will eventually get better under iPhone, but it ain't there yet, and it's already quite ready for prime time on an Android phone.

Basically, what it all tells you is that SOCs are pretty completely limited by the software running on them.

In addition, every hands-on that I've read by even remotely objective sources indicates that the iPhone 4 isn't really notably faster than the 3GS - everyone figures that the A4 has been downclocked for battery life. If you want some more supporting theory for that idea, during every presentation for the iPad, Apple has trumpetted the "1Ghz A4", and they never once mentioned the speed of the A4 in the iPhone 4. That pretty clearly indicates that it is NOT running at 1Ghz, especially since all of their top-end competition is running at 1Ghz now.

I just re-ran sunspider between my Nexus, iPhone and iPad.

The iPad did 10910.8

The iPhone crashed several times, and eventually pulled 17190.4

and, still Grand Champion, the Nexus running FroYo pulled 5958.0 !

...and remember, my Nexus is running, at the same time, Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Finance, Listen, NewsRob, Currency, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Talk, Google voice (even though that doesn't do a ton for me here in France, it does manage my US biz number and handle voicemain and sms forwarding and transcription) and a small host of widgets (Beautiful Home, Google News and Weather, Agenda, Astrid, Power Management, and 3 photos of my kids).

The following tasks happen at about the same speed: loading the phone app, opening the contacts list, etc. By "same speed", I mean to say "effectively instantly" on any of them. My Nexus boots up faster than either of the other two, and that's even loading widgets and starting / pre-syncing apps.

Final point - you claim several times that the App Store process gets rid of crashing apps. This is patently false. I have had maybe 2 apps with a crashing problem on Android out of more than 200 (off hand, I really can't think of any), and I've had many more than that on iGoodies. Specifically, crash-happy apps have included Tiger Woods Golf, The Elements for iPad, f#1%ing Mobile SAFARI on the iPad, the built-in Photos app (specifically when importing photos from an SD card with the apple-provided adaptor), TWC MAX+. The advantage on Android is that you can just return the app and get your money back.