Why does Javascript run so slow on iPhone?

Question

I\'ve been researching writing an app for iPhone. I really like the look of PhoneGap which basically allows you to contain a webpage in an app. My skills are primarially i

Answer 1

@Rudiger: Just a thought - A lot of the improvements to desktop computer speed since "8 years ago" have been attained in part through the use of multiple processors. Javascript is single-threaded, and so presumably would not be able to take advantage of such multiple processors. Yes, I know that browsers can take advantage of it, and that putting the other stuff on the other processors can provide more CPU power to the Javascript thread, but I have an app that is mostly raw Javscript internal processing, where the main thing that is going on is search and array manipulation.

So, when comparing desktop power to mobile processor power, for my purposes, maybe the slowdown would not be so bad? I currently run at very acceptable speeds on Safari on a six-year-old notebook computer with a single processor. So I'm thinking that Safari on iPhone or iPad for me might not be that much worse. Do you think this is reasonable?