[Xuzz]

The iPhone 3GS is much faster than the original iPad. On the iPhone 3GS, you have a reasonably slow CPU and GPU, but you also only have 320x480 pixels to deal with. On the iPad, you have a slightly faster CPU and GPU (but still single core), but have to render to 1024x760 — way more pixels. You also don't have any extra RAM on the iPad, but your images and framebuffer still have to cover that extra area.

The net result is that the iPhone 3GS is much faster in practice than the original iPad (or the iPod touch 4G, which has similar issues to a lesser extent — but which they still sell, so can't drop support for). Another similarly underpowered device is the iPad 3, so I'd expect them to drop support for that even before the older iPad 2.

[barredo]

Original iPad is even faster than iPhone 4

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/compare/1635302/16...

So it's faster than a 3GS http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/compare/1634913/16...

[Xuzz]

Yes, and you will note I said "slightly faster CPU and GPU". The point is that the whole device is much more resource constrained, as what needs to be done with the CPU and GPU on the original iPad is more than on the iPhone 3GS, but the CPU and GPU are not faster enough to create the same effective performance.

Yes, raw performance may be better on the original iPad. But raw performance is irrelevant if you can't get the same effective performance for the user.

[barredo]

I see

[StringyBob]

I find safari on an original iPad almost unusable; after upgrading from iOS4 to 5, it crashed regularly - I presume due to not having enough free memory. Support stopped at 5.1, just under 2 years after its international release, and only 1 year after it was replaced by ipad2.

Seems like they already have a handle on deprecation.