As many of us know, Apple announced a new iPhone, the 3GS, within days of the Palm Pre’s launch. The release was widely believed to be rushed out the door to steal some of Palm’s thunder since the Pre seems to be treading on all sorts of Apple’s turf (syncing with itunes comes to mind).

The primary difference between the iPhone 3G and the new 3GS is the speed of the CPU and graphics. Most of the time, end users won’t notice any performance difference (the platform was already pretty speedy), however this speed boost is planned to spark a whole new set of high end games, further pushing the iPhone platform as a gaming device.

Ready for the irony?
ZodTTD, developer of PSX4all (an app that plays full-blown Playstation games on mobile devices), has just released a Palm Pre version of his game platform to follow up his version for the iPhone 3GS. And you know what? The Pre version outperforms the iPhone 3GS!

I, for one, find this rather disappointing for Apple. Its bad enough that many iPhone fans are already dismissing the 3GS as not substantial enough of an upgrade to renew- but it turns out that new customers who want top notch game performance might also now dismiss the 3GS (the Pre’s keyboard may prove more useful for game controls as well).

Which begs the question- what demographic is the 3GS for? Is it simply for people who want 32GB of storage?
I’m not really concerned for Apple, however- I’m certain that there are enough fans out there who will buy the 3GS. I’m just underwhelmed.