Google's "FastButton" -- try this.

Google's "FastButton" -- try this.

I recently stumbled across a post from a Google employee about an optimization they came up with that makes touch buttons much faster here: http://code.google.com/mobile/articles/fast_buttons.html
 
Based on that I did some testing and on my iphone/ipad indeed button pushing is almost instantaneous -- noticably faster than using a jquery mobile 1.0a3 button.   I realize that I am not skilled enough to figure out how to incorporate it into jQuery mobile, but I figured Id share the code I used for testing in case someone might want to try it out.  Try tapping the button about 20 times really fast and it will be apparent.
 
  1. <html>
       <head>
          <meta name = "viewport" content = "initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" />
          <script type="text/javascript">
             function FastButton(element, handler) {
                this.element = element;
                this.handler = handler;
                element.addEventListener('touchstart', this, false);
             };
             FastButton.prototype.handleEvent = function(event) {
                switch (event.type) {
                   case 'touchstart': this.onTouchStart(event); break;
                   case 'touchmove': this.onTouchMove(event); break;
                   case 'touchend': this.onClick(event); break;
                   case 'click': this.onClick(event); break;
                }
             };
             FastButton.prototype.onTouchStart = function(event) {
                event.stopPropagation();
                this.element.addEventListener('touchend', this, false);
                document.body.addEventListener('touchmove', this, false);
                this.startX = event.touches[0].clientX;
                this.startY = event.touches[0].clientY;
                this.element.style.backgroundColor = "rgba(0,0,0,.7)";
             };
             FastButton.prototype.onTouchMove = function(event) {
                if(Math.abs(event.touches[0].clientX - this.startX) > 10 || Math.abs(event.touches[0].clientY - this.startY) > 10) {
                   this.reset();
                }
             };
             FastButton.prototype.onClick = function(event) {
                event.stopPropagation();
                this.reset();
                this.handler(event);
                if(event.type == 'touchend') {
                   preventGhostClick(this.startX, this.startY);
                }
                this.element.style.backgroundColor = "";
             };
             FastButton.prototype.reset = function() {
                this.element.removeEventListener('touchend', this, false);
                document.body.removeEventListener('touchmove', this, false);
                this.element.style.backgroundColor = "";
             };
             function preventGhostClick(x, y) {
                coordinates.push(x, y);
                window.setTimeout(gpop, 2500);
             };
             function gpop() {
                coordinates.splice(0, 2);
             };
             function gonClick(event) {
                for(var i = 0; i < coordinates.length; i += 2) {
                   var x = coordinates[i];
                   var y = coordinates[i + 1];
                   if(Math.abs(event.clientX - x) < 25 && Math.abs(event.clientY - y) < 25) {
                      event.stopPropagation();
                      event.preventDefault();
                   }
                }
             };
             document.addEventListener('click', gonClick, true);
             var coordinates = [];
             function initFastButtons() {
                new FastButton(document.getElementById("btn0"), goSomewhere);
             };
             function goSomewhere() {
                document.getElementById("clicklog").innerHTML = document.getElementById("clicklog").innerHTML + " Tap. ";
             };
          </script>
       </head>
       <body onload="initFastButtons();">
          <div id="clicklog" style="width:200px;height:200px;">
          </div>
          <button id="btn0" style="width:100px;height:50px;">Button</button>
       </body>
    </html>