If you have been using an iPhone or an iPad tablet for years and years, then you surely know that the third-party browsers released in the App Store were not as fast as Safari in the past, and this is because Apple did not allow this.
Apple is forcing web browser developers to use Safari's WebKit platform to build their apps, and this isn't going to change anytime soon. What has changed since iOS 8 is that Apple allows developers of third-party browsers in the App Store to make their applications as fast as Safari in terms of web browsing, and this is an extremely important change.
Safari benefits from a system called Nitro Javascript to allow fast loading of web pages, and until the release of iOS 8, no other App Store browser could have access to this system. Well, starting from the fall, things have changed, so that anyone can implement Nitro Javascript in their own browser launched in the App Store, so web pages will load as fast as in Safari in any kind of conditions.
The fastest browser for iPhone and iPad
The change does not only affect third-party browsers such as Google Chrome, Opera, iCabMobile, Dolphin, etc., but also the internal browsers of applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Search, etc. Practically any company that wants can offer its application a browser that loads web pages as fast as Safari, but the use of APIs provided by Apple is necessary to provide this functionality to users.
Now going back to the question in the title, in terms of functionality, any browser app that has been updated to be compatible with iOS 8 should be as fast as Safari. The developers normally specify the implementation of support for Nitro Javascript, but even if they don't, their title should be as fast as Safari and only by testing you will find this out, because Opera or Google do not provide such details.
If you are also interested in functionality, then iCabMobile is one of the most complex browsers I have come across so far and I recommend you to try it.
