Apple Thoughts: The S Stands for Speed!

"In releasing its new speed-centric update to the iPhone, Apple has boasted that the 3GS is twice as fast as its predecessor, but the company has remained mum on the handset’s actual specifications. Thanks to T-Mobile of the Netherlands, though, we know with certainty that the 3GS sports a 600MHz processor and 256MB of RAM – this compared to the 400MHz processor and 128MB of RAM on the iPhone 3G. Based on the report released Wednesday from Medialets, a smartphone-based advertising and analytics platform, the iPhone 3GS spec bump far exceeds Apple’s “twice as fast” sales pitch in real-world tests."

That fourth bar is the 3GS (head over to the link below to see the full piece and a larger version of the graph). For my day to day iPhone usage, the speed bump is more than noticeable; it's downright huge. I noticed it most when I was demoing the Push Notifications of BeeJive two nights ago. Launching, closing, getting a notification, and relaunching the app took nowhere near as long as launching the app used to take on the 3G.

Another place I've noticed the speed difference is in Safari. Pages load much faster and tap to zoom and pinch are much faster. Obviously, I can't quantify my results, but luckily lots of people have done that for me already.