3GS Pro

It has been well-documented how the powers that be at AT&T neutered the SlingPlayer for iPhone application when it restricted its use to Wi-Fi networks only and stripped you of the ability to watch your SlingBox over the 3G mobile network. Finally a solution to the problem has been developed. It is called 3G Unrestrictor. This handy application allows you to set ANY application on your iPhone to work over the 3G network. The only problem is that this application is of course not available in the App Store and is available as a $2 download from the Cydia Store which means you will have to jailbreak your iPhone to unleash its full potential.

Here’s a demo of the SlingPlayer for iPhone working on the AT&T 3G network.

Impressive is the word I have to use to sum up iStat for iPhone (iTunes link). I recently downloaded this application from the App Store and had to ask myself, “Dummy, why haven’t you gotten this yet?” This site runs Wordpress MU using XAMPP on my Mac Pro. Rarely does the massive computing power on the 8-core Mac Pro ever get taxed, but it would be really nice to  get an insight on system resources while away from the server. Now I can do exactly that.

The graphic to the right is quite disheartening. I ran the Speedtest.net application three times while on a 3G network in metro Atlanta before I could get an upload speed above 50kbps. The download speed is very acceptable for a mobile device, but having upload speeds nearly 96% slower than download speeds is just reprehensible.

Earlier today I tried to run a live stream on Qik while on the AT&T 3G network. By the time I was done, my 15 minute recording was showing on a 9 minute delay. I haven’t run a sniffer trace on how much bandwidth Qik takes, but it can’t be much. Upload speeds slightly better than a 56k modem are absolutely unacceptable for a $300 iPhone 3GS (with 2 year contract) and a mandatory $30/month data plan.

So what do you have to say for yourselves AT&T? Are you throttling bandwidth or does your 3G network just stink? I’d love to see results from other iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G users to see your performance results.