There’s an interesting list of benchmarks results on glbenchmark.com where you can compare the iPhone 3GS against other phones, including older iPhones. I did not spend a lot of time dissecting the results, but here’s the bottom-line, when compared to the iPhone 3G:
This is a synthetic benchmark and real life performance might be different, but that gives you a good idea of what the hardware is capable of. Note that this is running OpenGL 1.x and that the iPhone 3GS can run OpenGL 2.x, which has more features. I guess that you had been warned when we said that the 3GS graphics performance would “shock” you (follow the link for more details). The Zune HD is probably the only handheld that could beat the 3GS. [glbenchmark via extremetech]