Performance degradation for release release version with .pdb files?

Does the delivery .pdb file submit performance or memory constraints to the .NET application release assembly?

My team maintains the Compact Framework application (Windows Mobile 6.0) and we strive to reduce the download and install size. While exploring our options, we realized that we were sending .pdb files so that we could get detailed stack traces in our log files.

Since .pdb files double the size of an application, we decided we could live without the extra information provided by symbols.

I am wondering, however, if we also see performance gains by dropping them from the release build.

When are debug symbols loaded by default? It looks like they will need to be loaded when the app starts, in which case we should see faster startup times.

I understand the advantages / disadvantages of including .pdbs with the release app, but I haven't found anything that specifically addresses how the runtime uses them.