Marmalade have recently carried out speed and deployment size tests between test apps written with both Marmalade SDK and Unity 3D and the results are somewhat surprising. The test app basically displays a little over 400 animating sprites. Here are the results:
- Unity APK size is 658% larger than the Marmalade APK size
- Unity app installed size is 1935% larger than the Marmalade app installed size
- Marmalade APK app is 356% faster than Unity app
I was already aware of the size difference between Unity and Marmalade deployed apps but was surprised by the speed difference.
In the interests of fairness this is just a simple app that displays animating sprites, but it cannot be denied that a side by side raw comparison the Marmalade SDK beats Unity hands down.