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There were benchmarks of the new 4S posted online that also showed 3GS with iOS5 outperformed iOS4.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4951/iphone-4s-preliminary-ben...

I've been running the developer betas since about Beta 5 and it's been fine, update away.

if i had a 3GS i would wait until the next iOS update comes out unless there is a resounding "Wow!" from 3GS users.

I don't follow your logic, if there isn't a performance penalty I don't see why anyone would keep using the older OS.

jailbreaks?

Wow! :)

- a 3GS user

Wow :) The resounding one.

Although there's no numbers for the 3GS and 3rd generation iPod touch, GigaOM did benchmark the iPad, iPad 2, iPhone 4 and 4th generation iPod touch to find small to otherwise noticeable improvements across the board: http://gigaom.com/apple/benchmarking-the-ios-5-update/

I have a 32GB 3rd generation iPod touch as my low-end development unit (the 8GB models can't be upgraded past 4.2.x), and I can also confirm that it is noticeably snappier.