Hasta La Gadget!

The Wi-Fi-less RIM BlackBerry Tour

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)

The RIM BlackBerry Tour 9630 has received positive reviews from around the tech world, though there’s been one universal complaint: the lack of Wi-Fi. However, Sprint is hoping to right this wrong by releasing a Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerry Tour next year …

We don’t know how long it will last, but several blogs are reporting that Wal-Mart has rolled back the price on the $168 Magnavox NB530MGX to $98 (in-store only). Apparently, on Father’s Day weekend, the same player was selling for $128.

Is the Magnavox NB530MGX any good? It’…

(Credit: Jeff Bakalar/CNET)

Ask any diehard hockey fan out there and he’ll tell you that last year’s NHL 09 was close to being the best hockey game ever made. After countless critical acclaim and 19 sports-game-of-the-year awards over the past two years, the EA Canada team is back with NHL 10.

Along with Chicago Blackhawks young superstar Patrick Kane as this year’s featured cover athlete, the game promises plenty of improvements, from board play to first-person fighting.

We sat down and played a full three periods in Stanley Cup Final fashion, Penguins versus Red Wings, to find out what’s new in NHL 10….

Oh, I can keep going: financial news aggregation, slideshow presentation, carrier lamentation, lyrical collect-ation, and… and… tethering? Seven out of eight ain’t bad. Anyway, enough of that—here’s your weekly app dump:

Navigon Lite: Hark! Dedicated navigation units are dead, for the iPhone hath slain them! Except no, not at all, because navigation apps are still fresh, imperfect, and too expensive to “just try.” Navigon’s Lite version, then, is a great idea: It lets users test the app’s routing power, nice UI, and Navteq mapset—all 1.29GB of it, taking up space on your phone. The catch—and it’s a big one—is that GPS doesn’t work. But even as is, it’s marginally useful, and definitely worth your time if you’re considering taking the plunge on the full version—whenever it comes out, that is. So you’re not shocked when it does, the Euro app is $140.

Absolut Drinkspiration : Drinking apps are almost invariably junkware, and advertisement apps are usually a waste of time. Absolut Drinkspiration is both of these things, and nonetheless manages to be pretty good. At its core it’s a drink recipe and recommendation app; at this, it does fine, helped by the fact that Absolut is happy to accommodate non-vodka listings. (A true gentleman, this app!) If your drinking needs a little guidance, it can help with that too: it’ll recommend drinks based on parameters like taste, time and mood. It’s also got GPS built in so you can upload your mixes and see what others all over the world are drinking, and exactly where they’re drinking it. Free.

TroubleSpots: TroubleSpots is part of an ambitious project, providing a tool to report when, where and how your cellular network has failed you. The reports, with embedded geodata, are passed on to AT&T, who will presumably see them and feel guilty, or something.

Two things: I think AT&T probably already knows where its network is thin; and I have a sneaking suspicion that using TroubleSpots inadvertently draws you into a secret guerilla annoyance campaign run by, say, T-Mobile, waged with iPhone apps and complaint forms. We’ll never know! Anyhow, if having the ability to instantly file a complaint with your carrier will keep you from hurling your iPhone out the car window, this app is worth its (nonexistent) price of entry.

Pix Remix, Slideshow Builder : A pair of slideshow apps, both paid, which do very similar things. Both make Ken Burns-style moving picture shows, both can share presentations from phone-to-phone or though a web interface, and neither can export presentation into common slideshow formats, like PowerPoint or Keynote. The differences? Slideshow Builder pans more intelligently using facial recognition, while Pix Remix has many more presentation options. Another biggie: Slideshow Builder, though a dollar more expensive at $4, has a near-full-featured free version.

Lyrics+ : There are a few annoyingly obvious, dead-simple apps that we just weren’t allowed to have on account of the iPhone SDK’s prior restriction on music library access. Thank god for OS 3.0. Two weeks ago, we finally got a music-library-enabled alarm clock; this week, a real-time lyrics fetcher. There are plenty of ways to incorporate lyrics into your audio file tags pre-transfer, but this one will do it over the air (correction: it just displays lyrics. Nothing is written to your tags), while you listen. A buck for now, regularly $2. (via TUAW)

Finalprice: Fun fact: With a little help from the App Store, anyone can function as an adult without any understanding of math, at all. This is thanks to apps like Finalprice, which calculates discounts and sales taxes to give you an actual, at-register totals for whatever you’re considering buying. Or, you know, you could just figure this stuff out on the built-in calculator in a few seconds. Your innumeracy tax: one dollar.

CNN Money: A polished single-source news app with a solid video section, clean (but weblike) interface, and a real-time ticker, if you’re into that kind of thing. Good if CNN Money is your thing, although I’ll stick with multi-source aggregators like Fluent, or an RSS reader. Free.

MyWi: And finally, one for the jailbreakers. MyWi is an extremely slick tethering app that, instead of connecting to computers via Bluetooth or cable, sets up a zero-config wi-fi network, router-style. It even broadcasts an SSID (a network name) so you—and others—can easily tap into an iPhone’s data connection. It’s great, but $10 is a bit steep for a jailbreak app—especially one that violates your contract, potentially landing you in trouble with your carrier.

This Week’s App News on Giz:

• NYC Exit Strategy: The Other NYC Subway App You Need

• The Cost of Buying Every iPhone App: $144,326.06

• SoundAMP App Turns the iPhone Into a Makeshift Hearing Aid

• Amazon Won’t Let Mobile Apps Use Its Product Info Anymore

• iTwitter: The First iPhone Twitter App With Push, Sorta

• TwittaRound Twitter Reality Augmentation Looks Amazing, Even If It Is a Horrible Idea

• Push Gmail for the iPhone, Finally (It’s Not What You Think)

• Prowl Pushes Growl Notifications to Your iPhone

• Nearest Tube iPhone App Adds Digital Directions to Your Surroundings

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

A smartphone broadband test conducted by Wired.com found that AT&T customers reported the slowest average 3G network speeds, while Verizon subscribers posted the speediest results.

Conducted in May, our interactive 3G speed test attracted about 15,000 participants — 12,000 of whom reported valid, usable results. The study focused on 3G networks deployed in the United States by AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile.

Verizon came in first place with an average download speed of 1,940 Kbps, as reported by 856 participants. T-Mobile’s average rate was 1,793 Kbps with 1,189 reported T-Mobile users. Third was Sprint with 1,598 Kbps, based on data from 1,570 users. In dead last was AT&T with an average of 901 Kbps — but an overwhelmingly large user sample of 8,153 test takers.

The debate over which carrier is best has been around for as long as there have been cellphones. A common myth is that Verizon’s is the most reliable and fast, while AT&T’s is the worst. These claims have been difficult to verify because of the variable nature of wireless technology. But Wired.com gave it a try on U.S. phones anyway.

(We also conducted an earlier test on the iPhone only, rating its network performance on a global level; that study revealed that AT&T customers reported considerably slower speeds than iPhone owners on European networks.)

To gather the data, Wired.com asked U.S. smartphone owners to test their 3G download speeds by running a custom web page that involved downloading an image. Then, we asked participants to manually plot their data on an interactive map. For a second data set, our test developer Ben Reubenstein automatically tracked download speeds using the test page.

After analyzing both data sets, Wired.com opted to use Reubenstein’s automatically reported results, because the information was more complete, comprehensive and reliable.

We acknowledge our speed test is not scientific; we view it as a general barometer that gauges the performance of 3G networks in the United States. With that said, we note a few caveats:

• We realize that the substantially larger amount of AT&T test takers may unfairly contribute to an overall lower download speed — so take this considerably lower result with a nugget of salt.
• The test results rely heavily on good faith that participants were being honest (and not, for instance, running the test over Wi-Fi). We did, however, remove any bogus, impossibly high results, as well as incomplete data fields.
• Software, processors, memory and other factors will obviously affect a cellphone’s overall download speeds. Smartphones with faster CPUs, more RAM and so on will clearly give the network an advantage. But then again, these test results should give you a general idea of the network performance you should expect not only on these networks, but also the phones they carry.

Interestingly, our results appear to coincide with a similar test conducted by PC World in May. PC World’s test involved working with Novarum Inc., a wireless consultant firm, who performed a 3G stress test from 283 locations in a day. PC World’s testing also found Verizon was fastest, with Sprint and AT&T coming in second and third, respectively. (T-Mobile was not included in the PC World test.)

With that said, we thank Reubenstein for coding our test, and we also thank our fellow friends in the blog community for helping spread word of the study to attract participants. We invite readers to take a look at our spreedsheet containing the results [csv] if they wish to perform their own analysis.

See Also:

• Wired.com’s iPhone 3G Survey Reveals Network Weaknesses
• Survey: People Love iPhone Despite Its Imperfections
• Apple: We’re Sticking With AT&T for the iPhone
• 4 Reasons Apple Should Share the iPhone With Verizon
• Cell Phone Reception Bars Are Meaningless
• What’s Wrong With the 3G in iPhone 3G
• Suit Alleges AT&T, Apple ‘Oversold’ iPhone, Strained 3G Network …
• Video: iPhone 3G in Reality Versus Advertisement
• UK Bans Apple’s ‘Really Fast’ iPhone 3G Ad