iOS 5 on iPhone 3GS: What's missing?

Coming this Fall, iOS 5 will bring along a boatload of exciting new stuff designed for the same devices as its predecessor. Specifically, Jobs has confirmed during yesterday’s keynote talk that iOS 5 will run on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS, iPad and iPad 2 and third- and fourth-generation iPod touch. If history is anything to go by, some of the new features won’t work on older devices due to constrained resources.

Unfortunately, the iOS 5 features page reveals nothing about possible limitations on legacy hardware. Bloggers, however, are beginning to discover what has been implemented in iOS 5 for iPhone 3GS and what features have been stripped away. Take it from a guy in the below clip, “In my opinion, iOS 5 beta works flawlessly on iPhone 3GS”, he concludes. Let’s begin with what works first.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBQ1T8A2qQY?rel=0&w=670&h=411]

You’re probably wondering about the new Notification Center feature which was greeted with an erupting applause during the keynote. You can sigh a breathe of relief, it runs without any limitations on the iPhone 3GS. Just pull your finger down from the top of the screen to reveal a handy list of all the notifications on your phone, in addition to nicely animated live stocks and weather widgets. Twitter integration also works on the iPhone 3GS, as does the digital Newsstand plus the accompanying store section. The camera app features grid lines and lets you lock the exposure and brightness settings, but image editing (red eye removal, cropping and magic wand) is not supported on the iPhone 3GS. Likewise, iOS 5 Safari on iPhone 3GS supports Reading List, but the new tab bar which sits right below the address bar and the Reader feature seem to be missing (both have been demoed during the keynote on both an iPhone 4 and iPad 2). Maybe this guy has forgotten to check out the corresponding applications’ preferences in the Settings app. Have you had any experience with iOS 5 developer preview on legacy hardware? Let us know in the comments.