which is more expensive for iphone?

need some basic advice. I'm wondering which of these two are more expensice for an iphone game:

1: a sprite on a plane with a 512 texture

2: a flat cutout mesh of 40 triangles, rigged with three bones, and has three bone animations..no textures

basically i'm wondering if I should use sprite or animate something on a flat polygon.. The advantage of the first one is of course, being able to go crazy with the textures. but with the second one in my case I wouldn't need textures, and I can have more animations.. My Main question here is which one's going to be more expensive memory wise, or which one will slow down the game.. (if none will, then think of multiples of each on the screen)

Thanks!

You should also look into performance optimization in the docs and also search on the forums for specific keywords (e.g drawcalls, performance) on this topic. Anyway, I think your approach should be deciding what design/style/artwork you really want go with and then make a comparison of both in Unity as it's very much depending, also on the quantity/quality of your art. Mostlikely, your game will not only consist of only 40 triangles, won't it? Sometimes it's better to use triangles and sometimes textures, or mixed it! Also check into sprite manager plugin (not free). You should really make some tests!!!