Over the past few days I have been wondering whether or not to buy the new iPhone 3GS to replace my not-quite-6 month-old-iPhone 3G. On Saturday,I decided to take the plunge. I was ringing around 02 Stores to locate a White 32GB 3GS. I really like my Black iPhone 3G 16GB, but decided I’ve had a black one so I might as well get a white one this time. After getting it home, I had a play and today I decided to do my own tests to see whether the 3GS really is quicker.

The tests I will do will compare the start up speed of the phones, the speed of web pages loading both over the 3G network, the speed of loading games and also I will test several apps and use the memory info app to see how much ram is available during the tests. Tests will have video or screenshots so you can see for yourself too!

Just before I start the tests the iPhone 3g 16GB is Black, and the iPhone 3GS 32Gb is White, both are fully charged are not jail-broken or unlocked. Also both have the same 3rd Party (non Apple) apps on.

Right then, lets begin…

Test 1: Start up Time

This first test will compare the start-up time of both phones.

The clear winner in this test is the iPhone 3GS. I am glad the start up time has been improved as it did feel like you were waiting forever. However I must say, I rarely ever turned the phone off!

Test 2: Safari Web Browsing

This next test was too see whether Apples claims of ‘much faster web browsing’ is actually true. When I first watched the keynote I was a little sceptical over the claims so lets see whether I was right to be.

So it seems that my doubts were unfounded and that actually, again, the 3GS came out on top. I ran this test over 3G and not WIFI so you could see there was no interference of the router. Mobile sites seem to load roughly the same speed as shown with the 02 Page at the end but the difference with the BBC full desktop site was huge. Far quicker on the 3GS.

Test 3: Game Loading Speed

Gaming on the iPhone is becoming big business with publishers like EA, (no surprise) Activison and others all releasing some big titles on the iPhone. One thing I did notice when using my iPhone 3G was that games usually played fine apart from the odd crash, due to lack of RAM, but also larger games like Car Jack City, and Sims 3 would take a while to load, so lets see whether the 3GS be any better?

Well again the 3GS has come out on top. The speed loading the Sims especially amazed me, it was far quicker. I haven’t had to chance to play very much yet but I will do and report if there are any crashes.

Test 4: Memory (RAM)

I wanted to see the true difference in ram available so firstly I turned off both Devices, then turned them back on and started an app called memory info. The results from straight after start up are shown below:

So you can clearly see the difference in memory available after a full restart of the phone. Just over 4x more memory is available for the iPhone 3GS to use when apps are loaded.

The next part of this test was to see how much memory is available after opening the Sims 3, hitting home, opening, Car Jack Streets, hitting home, opening and playing a song on the ipod then loading memory info. The results are below:

After loading the apps the difference again is huge. There is under 15MB of RAM left on the 3G but a good 138MB left on the 3GS.

Overall, it is obvious the Hardware improvements have helped the iPhone tremendously and it is likely users will experience a much better-performing-less-crashing-iPhone. With these Hardware improvements it also means developers can push apps further than ever before. Lets just hope they don’t forget about 2G and 3G users. One final thing to note is you can see the difference in battery levels after performing the tests. Both phones were fully charged this morning and both have undergone the same tests and restarts when I needed to sort the camera out. It does seem then that the 3GS Battery is better too which I am very pleased about.

So, is it worth Upgrading? Yes and no. If you use the iPhone for simple apps, email, sms basically a phone with a bit extra and that’s all you want stick with the 3G and either wait for the 3GS to drop it’s price or get the new iPhone next June. Trust me there will be one! If you are an iPhone Gamer or use the intensive apps or keep running out of juice then definitely look at upgrading!