iOS 5 Comparison Video: iPhone 3GS vs iPhone 4

Is that a soundtrack from Age of Empires III or something?

Good to know and thank crud there's a mute button for that soundtrack!

Just for the sake of being 100% sure I first rebooted my phone - twice - and found that it was no faster than before I rebooted. I then Restored my phone using the iOS 5 Beta image again and still found the same annoying slowness.
Unless my 3GS is somehow slower than other 3GS's, iOS 5 does have an adverse effect on a 3GS's speed, at least at this early beta stage. I'd chalk this video up to being a poor demo.

You suck at side by side comparisons...at least tap the items at the same time...or swipe at the same time...it's not an accurate comparison when you can't do it in unison.

Aside from the looped ungodly soundtrack, their inability to do the same operations on two devices at once, and second-class imitation of Apple's pan-over-device-zoomed-in, I love the look of iOS 5. As a 3GS owner, I'm happy to know performance is zippy and in some cases (at least with this release) mine outperforms an iPhone 4. -jaw falls to the floor-

Though I can't say I'm thrilled for the final release. If iOS 5 follows iOS 4's release pattern, 4.0 beta was incredible, and by 4.0 beta 3 or 4 sending a text was a daunting task, let alone boot up. Hopefully Apple focuses on legacy performance a little more, even though it's technically a goal of theirs to encourage upgrades.

Well, none of the iOS 5's features is exactly CPU, GPU or RAM intensive, so if iOS 5 ran poorly in 3GS, it would have been another of those Apple's moves to force people to upgrade. Besides, 3GS's and iP4's hardware is almost identical, 4 has twice the RAM and couple hundred MHz faster CPU, that is all.