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Can we update the heading (to 21%) - as per the article: "Thanks to the many readers who have pointed out my incorrect wording of the 3GS' performance improvements. The tables in the article have been updated to reflect the correct percentages. I appreciate the corrections"
Nice improvement but what I really want to know is whether overall responsiveness has also been improved? On all these smartphones there is a constant latency of about 1/4 second between touching the screen and the phone recognizing the action. It's not a dealbreaker but it feels nowhere near instant to use these devices. Instant would be the ipod clickwheel or old nokia phones. Instant is when whatever I drag is always under my finger, not lagging behind.
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A rule of thumb is that "instant" is about <100ms. Any higher than that and it will feel sluggish.
I would say that there's no such delay on the iPhone, either on the new model or earlier. Feedback to touch is instant, and dragging exhibits exactly the behavior you describe.
Are you kidding? The 3G has a very noticeable and annoying latency on input (e.g. when entering text, when switching between modes in the Maps app, or when switching between most apps). It's not the end of the world, but feedback is hardly "instant". Text input latency seems notably better with iPhone OS 3.0, happily.
Is there a phone which does A? The iPhone does A. Are you kidding, the iPhone doesn't do B!

The grandparent specifically asked about a 1/4 second delay on all touches, the iPhone is (at a guess) faster than 1/16 seconds, certainly well below the magic 1/10 of a second.

Switching apps on the 3G can certainly be sluggish, but is a very different problem, solved in part by upping the processing speed in the 3GS by 300MHz.

The grandparent specifically asked about a 1/4 second delay on all touches

So? The parent post specifically asserted that "feedback to touch is instant", which is plainly not the case.

There is a definite improvement in responsiveness. It's especially noticeable in the email app; it used to have a slight delay between emails and now switching between messages feels instant.
the real surprise from this article is that it takes the palm pre a staggering 8.6 seconds to load google maps.
8.6 seconds is HUGELY staggering. So staggering that I actually staggered in real life. Wow.
Pre is linux. So, it is possible to port almost everything for it. kismet, aircrack-ng, wireshark, etc.
iPhone is OS X (which means UNIX). So, it is possible to port almost everything for it. kismet, aircrack-ng, wireshark, etc.
You just have to pay 100$ to see it (legally?) run on your hardware. How is the Pre handling the SDK stuff? Or are they?
I wish they did a comparison to iPhone OS 1.x vs. 2.x vs. 3.x. I've noticed a big decrease in "snappy responsiveness" when the 2.0 upgrade came into play. I have a sneaking suspision it's apple adding all the "restrictive crap & checks" slowing the entire iPhone down. Like code sigining, sandboxing, and probably other things.