14 DAY TRIAL // Early Windows Phone 8.1 adopters may or may not have noticed some of the improvements that Microsoft has made in the Internet browsing department.
There are so many new features included in the new version of the operating system that many Windows Phone fans might have missed quite a few.
Luckily, the folks over at GSMArena remembered that one of the solid pieces of software that Microsoft included in its products was Internet Explorer.
If you were content with the way Internet Explorer 10 worked on Windows Phone 8 with GDR3 and Nokia Black updates, prepare to be blown away by Internet Explorer 11 in Windows Phone 8.1 Developer Preview.
According to the benchmarks run by GSMArena, Microsoft made lots of under the hood enhancements to its mobile browser.
While single-core performance remained the same due to the restrictions of the processor inside each Windows Phone device, when it came to browsers, all three Lumia tested (1520, 1020 and 720) scored higher when running Windows Phone 8.1 Developer Preview.
The first synthetic benchmark, SunSpider, measures the JavaScript performance of a web browser, in this case Internet Explorer 10 and 11.
Curiously, while the Lumia 1520 and Lumia 1020 scored higher in SunSpider, thus showing slight improvements over Internet Explorer 10, the Lumia 720 got it much worse. This could be due to one or more bugs that will probably be fixed in the final version.
Internet Explorer 11 is not the only improvement over Windows Phone 8, but it does seem the most important for those who depend on the speed of their Internet browser.
We expect these benchmark results to improve further, even if just slightly, in the final version of Windows Phone 8.1, which is expected to arrive sometime this summer. Stay tuned for more updates on what's in store for Windows Phone fans.