Ugh... I missed my opportunity. I upgraded the OS on my iPhone 3G and the thing ran soooo slow after that. It was so slow that it was almost impossible to use it. I should have sued Apple!!!
That's BS. Advertising how awesome $vendor is with updating their own hardware but failing to note that it runs like crap, that user should do the research and isn't possible to revert, while nagging you with update notifications should result in a class action suit as well.
They stated iOS 9 would run on the 4S. It does, but quite painfully. They clearly knew this would happen as they have a very good understanding of the limitations of their own hardware.
You can downgrade an iPhone 3G. Firmware signing started with the 3GS (and IIRC, that one was cracked, only the iPhone 4 and later firmware signing works as intended)