Performance difference between iPhone & iPod touch?

I developed my first game doing testing entire on a first-gen iPod Touch and it wasn't a big deal, I think. I think the performance issue largely depends on how intensively you are using the hardware.

I would say that you can use the iPod Touch for your development and testing. Then find iPhone owners as beta testors and ask them some specific performance questions if you are worried.

 

There's no difference between the 1st gen iPod Touch and the iPhone. The 2nd gen Touch did get a 108MHz boost to 520MHz though, so you're looking at a speed boost of approximately 25% over other iDevices. It's noticeable with games that push the envelope -- ones whose frame rates drop when things get busy; obviously it becomes the better performer on the 2nd gen Touch. For games that don't require as much CPU/GPU horsepower, the differences probably wouldn't be noticeable, though.

 

You're *almost* correct there! There is one very notable difference between an iPhone and iPod Touch (either 1st or 2nd gen)... memory. Actually available memory to be precise!

All of these devices have the same base amount of RAM to run apps in. However, the iPhone has extra processes running on it that do not exist on an iPod Touch: the phone and sms apps. These two run at all times in the background, eat up some available memory (which means you have less potential RAM) and a few extra CPU cycles (though probably less than 1%, so speed should not be noticable unless you try a 2nd gen touch).

If you're doing game design, it's pointless to test on the simulator because it has all the multi-core horsepower and gobs of RAM that your Mac can give it. Something running fine in the simulator is no guarantee that it'll run good on a device.

The only *real* way to test your stuff under worst case conditions is to do it on an iPhone, not an iPod Touch, and definitely not the simulator. And make sure that iPhone is one you use all the time for other stuff- phone calls, sms, e-mail, web browsing, etc. That will tell you how your game will perform in the real world. If it'll behave in an environment like that, it will run on any of the i-devices

 

As noted here in so many words, 1G iPod touch, iPhone and iPhone 3G are practically identical in performance. 2G iPod touch is a bad reference device because it is roughly 30% faster than the other devices.

If you're planning to develop on a single device only, it's strongly recommended that you either find an old iPhone or 1G iPod touch for cheap. It would be very difficult to optimize the performance of your game without a lowest common device.

 

There are some first gen touches on their site just look for it to say (first generation) after iPod touch