IOS 5 has some – but few – iPhone 3GS limitations

By Molly McHugh June 9, 2011

This story is part of our complete Apple WWDC coverage

Most of us won’t get our hands on iOS 5 until this fall. Luckily, all those developers who have early use can report back to us for an early peak at all the details. The biggest question on many iPhone users minds? How is it going to work with the iPhone 3GS.

There are those that walk among us not crazed enough to need every need a new iPhone every time the hardware is upgraded, and now it sounds like they will very minimally pay for it. According to 9to5Mac, all the big new features work flawlessly: Twitter, the Notifications Center, and Newsstand function just as they do for iPhone 4s. Unfortunately some Safari upgrades were available, and neither were photo editing features. Some are mentioning the lack of tabs in the browser, but that is an iPad-only update. There is some a little extra lag time on some operations, but it’s extremely minor.

But the best news is that iCloud functioned as it should. There wasn’t any serious concern it about this being an issue, but it’s reassuring to hear that one of Apple’s big releases will work just fine with the legacy model. Of course, iPhone 3G users out there are left completely in the lurch: IOS 5 will not function on the older-generation models.

Check out the video below to see a simultaneous iOS 5 walk-through on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS for yourself.

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Before coming to Digital Trends, Molly worked as a freelance writer, occasional photographer, and general technical lackey…

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