http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3579&p=2

iPhone 3G (ARM11) iPhone 3GS (ARM Cortex A8)
Manufacturing Process 90nm 65nm
Issue Width 1-issue 2-issue
Pipeline Depth 8-stage 13-stage
Clock Speed 412MHz 600MHz
L1 Cache Size 16KB I-C + 16KB D-C 32KB I-C + 32KB D-C
L2 Cache Size N/A 256KB

The scenario your friend had I would however class as “unintentional non compatibility” if that makes sense.

That definitely isn’t true, developers can compile to different versions of the OS and to the device.

I’ve seen cases where a friend with a v2 Touch couldn’t install an app, when they tried it said it wasn’t compatible with their device. They contacted the developer and he said he’d forgot to included the new model in the build options (as it was written pre v2). They submitted a new version that day and a week later my friend could install the app when it made the store.

Apple has to break from the older devices eventually, otherwise they will get left behind by newer more powerful phones. Phone and MP3 users are fickle and want the latest tech and can often afford it due to phone subsidies. Apple don’t need to convince developers to move, they will adapt or limit their market…

Developers already cope with varying speeds of processor. There are games on the app store that, for example, have more opponents in racing games on the new Touch than on the iPhone and some games run smoother on the Touch than the iPhone etc.

Games developers have been coping with this for years, PCs have lots of different hardware and clock speeds and can adjust frame rate accordingly or offer options to lower visual quality.

Apple will need to overhaul the app store to make a section of apps specifically for the iPhone 3GS as the older models won’t be able to run apps that are being developed with 265MB of RAM and a 600MHz CPU in mind. But that isn’t something that I can see Apple wanting to do. How do you convince devs to create applications that will only run on the iPhone 3GS when you have an audience of 40,000,000 iPhone/iPod Touchs? To me, that move doesn’t make sense, which is why I feel like there is something else afoot here rather than devs having full access to a 600MHz core and 256MB of RAM.

in terms of compatibility I don’t see it as being that big a deal. OS X already has development and runtime tools that make multi arch very simple. The biggest change is actually the graphics not the cpu. there are likely going to be games that are 3GS only but regular apps shouldn’t be a huge difference. They might just accomplish more complicated tasks like javascript and gps route calculations faster on the new hardware.

I don’t believe that they could have clocked the old SoC with the Arm11 and MBX-lite up to 600Mhz for the arm11 and got the power savings reported – even with a better screen and perhaps lower power ssd and memory. 256MB ram is also going to boost power usage so maybe they are not releasing the specs because to save on power usage the iphone will treat it in blocks and power on/off the memory as required. instead of a single 256MB block.

Still, you never know – there might be licensing issues involved that means they aren’t willing to disclose the information. Shortly someone will rip it apart and tell us anyway. They might have improved the OS enough to get ‘real world’ improvements of 2.5 times or so. I will be surprised if it is arm11.

As a real productivity device I believe the HTC Touch pro2 is not getting enough love from UMPCportal – shame on you

Strangely, Nokia, SE, Samsung, LG, HTC are still surviving quite fine here. Blackberry and Palm never had a presence in the market here.

I love the fact that the iPhone is here, even though I don’t like it personally. Because the carriers here have finally realised that including data usage in the phone plans instead of having seperate “mobile broadband” plans might actually be a good idea.

So after iPhone got here, buying any smartphone has gotten a lot more interesting, as you can actually use all of their features without paying out your ass for data usage