I'm developing a Xamarin.iOS application which interacts with an online API via the HttpWebRequest class, and downloads JSON responses by calling the synchronous GetResponse method. After some trial testing using the Stopwatch class, I have found that while a call to one of our endpoints over HTTP has an average response time of about 1,000 ms, a call to the same endpoint over HTTPS takes an average of 2,500 ms.
This is consistent on both the simulator and on the physical device, and the pattern continues across other websites as well testing between HTTP and HTTPS. This seems like a pretty significant increase, considering accessing the same endpoint over HTTPS using the Safari browser on the device is just as fast as HTTP.
Are there any known complications when it comes to accessing URLs using SSL with Xamarin?