I still have OS 3.0 on my 3GS, are there any benefits in upgrading to the latest OS?

is your handset jailbroken? if yes then dont update.

if no, get yourself on 3.1.3, its much faster IMO and the apps seem a lot more stable. 3.0 is 4 releases old now, get yourself up to date, its free after all!

3.1 also fixes a number of security issues with the handset

I would say, unless your jailbroken then it is certainly advisable to update

no, my phone isnt jailbroken
when i do an update via itunes, does it make a backup of the contents on my iphone?

Yeah you won't lose anything. It will backup before doing it.

There isn't a great deal of difference to be honest, 3.0 was stable, in fact I think the GPS takes longer to lock on than it did before, however I don't have the latest I have the f/w before the latest.

It breaks the tethering hack apparently. I'm still on 3.0.1.

I'm on 3.1.2 jailbroken and unlocked so won't be upgrading til anything worth while is added and a better jailbreak is implemented for 3.1.3.
No way am I going to lose my features and extras.

The iPhone Dev team and jailbreak community are convinced that 3.1.3 was only released to try and flush out any exploits the community may have found, which Apple can then patch ready for 4.0 - therefore the iPhone Dev team are not revealing anything, and have said that they will wait until 4.0 is released.

How do you know if you have the updated version and if i dont how do i update it?

Thanks

Go into Settings > General > About. Then see what 'Version' is listed as.

You can update by plugging it in to your computer and iTunes will notify you if an update is available. If it doesn't, you can tell it to check for updates.

Ah ok thanks just checked and doesnt need the update thought i had to do a manual update for the iphone.