Speed of Returning to the Home Screen on iPhone 3G and iPhone 4

Something I noticed when first using the iPhone 4 was that returning to the home screen felt slow. I assumed that because everything else was faster, this aspect had simple stayed at the same speed compared to iPhone 3G.

When I went back to the 3G, I found the device seemed extremely responsive to presses of the home button. A side-by-side comparison showed that the older iPhone was consistently much faster at returning to the home screen. It gets there in roughly half the time. The video (34 seconds) shows this. It’s a shame I could not use the iPhone 4’s camera to record this, and that I didn't have a real tripod.

I suspect this is to do with the recent app switcher, shown when double tapping the home button. The iPhone 4 needs to make sure you aren’t going to press the button again before starting the zooming out animation. I guess that the 3G can start the animation before it has determined if you are doing a single or double press of the button.

I would like to repeat that this is very noticeable when switching from one device to the other. All those milliseconds…