Android phones whisk users across the web more than 50 percent faster than the iPhone, according to a study that compared the two top mobile OSes performance when downloading web pages.

The study, conducted by mobile website optimization company Blaze.io, involved more than 40,000 downloads of web pages belonging to the Fortune 1000 companies. Android loaded pages 52 percent faster when rendering full web pages than the iPhone. On average, Android phones took 2.1 seconds to render non-mobile optimized web pages, while the iPhone took 3.2 seconds.

Android bested the iPhone on site loading time a whopping 84% of the time.

The test included the Samsung Nexus S (Android 2.3), the Samsung Galaxy S (Android 2.2), the iPhone 4.3 and the iPhone 4.2. Pages were loaded using a strong WiFi connection, and each device loaded each Fortune 1000 website three times.

Oddly, the study found that the much-touted JavaScript improvements in the latest versions of Android and the iPhone had little real world effect on these web pages.

“Our conclusion is that JavaScript performance doesn’t impact an average page load time,” the company wrote in the study. “Apparently, JavaScript is already so optimized that it doesn’t play a big role in the time it takes to load a page. It’s likely that rich AJAX applications benefit from these improvements, but users should not expect their casual web surfing to move faster.”

Both OSes clocked in nearly identical 2-second loading times for pages designed especially for mobile devices.

The company says the results surprised them.

We assumed that similar hardware specs and the same WebKit foundation would make iPhone and Android’s browsers perform equally. We assumed that a faster JavaScript engine equals a faster browser. We assumed that 3G would be way slower than WiFi, even under good conditions.
All of these assumptions have been proven wrong when we actually measured those scenarios. Without measuring, you don’t know when and where you need to optimize.

The Android-vs-iPhone-F1000-Paper includes more details on Blaze’s methodology and conclusions and will definitely be required reading for the ongoing battle between Android and iPhone fanatics.