One of the more interesting conversations the Smartphone Experts team had at CES 2010 was with Root Wireless, who monitors the performance of Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile in the US. Their overall message is that there’s no single best carrier, because it varies so much from place to place, but they did try to determine which carrier survived CES the best.

Here’s the bottom line:

• AT&T started out providing the fastest service, but quickly fell to 4th place.

• Verizon better maintained its consistency of service, performing particularly well on the event’s busiest days.

Loading its proprietary Root Mobile™ crowdsourcing application on smartphones purchased off-the-shelf from each of the ‘Big Four’ carriers, Root Wireless conducted stationary tests at a fixed location immediately adjacent to the Las Vegas Convention Center, constantly running Root Mobile from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., January 5-8. The linear tests determine data transmissions speeds, cell tower hand-off rates and network connection failures, as monitored and reported by Root Mobile. It is noteworthy that the findings differ from others data transmission speed tests conducted using PCs, precisely because Root Mobile is engineered to determine wireless consumers’ real-world experience using smartphones, not PCs. Also worth keeping in mind: Results reported here are local to the Las Vegas Convention Center. Root Wireless network mapping software has confirmed that all network performance is local; it varies from neighborhood-to-neighborhood, from service provider to service provider.

CrackBerry Kevin shot some video at Root Wireless’ booth, so if you’re curious for more (and the techies among you should be!) go check that out on CrackBerry.com.

My experience after the break!

Now make no mistake, there were a lot of iPhones at CES. Tons of BlackBerrys too spread over all the carriers, and a few DROIDs here and there, but the iPhone and AT&T definitely had one of the most visible presences at this convention. For my part, I brought my Rogers iPhone 3GS with me (and yes, it was very expensive). That meant I roamed between AT&T 3G and T-Mobile EDGE (something several Americans told me they wished they could do!).

Anecdotally, not just at CES but at the airports in between, I would walk down a hall and lose all signal on one network and have to wait for my iPhone to roam back to the other. Same in Vegas, the hotel had zero T-Mobile EDGE, but fine AT&T 3G, while the Convention Center was AT&T fail and solid T-Mobile EDGE. Sympathetically, I don’t know how you Americans suffer through any of your GSM/HSPA carriers (and Dieter might add Sprint to the list, given his MiFi failures during the show).

Fake Steve was right, you live in one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, and quite often you can’t connect a call or pull any data. And worse, even when a cell tower gives you 5 full bars of signal, there’s no telling wether the backhaul has any actual bandwidth left behind it. (Imagine having a powerful WiFi router lit up at home, but your cable or DSL modem was dead behind it).

O2 is apparently suffering now as well, so you’re not alone, but it’s going to take massive investment and brilliant innovation (including solid 4G coverage) to ride the upcoming tsunami-like data demands.

If in previous years you found yourself thinking Otterbox‘s tank-style Defender was too much armor, and their Impact just not quite tank-like enough, at CES 2010 they showed TiPb a middle-ground that some of you might find just right — the Commuter series.

In both regular and TL (translucent, a reference to the clear strip across the back) versions, they’re aiming it squarely at the urban warrior who wants as much protection as possible while still maintaining a slim, pocketable profile.

Check it out on video, after the break!

At CES 2010, Cocoon Innovations went from dipping a toe into iPhone waters with their new, windowed, messenger-style netbook bag to diving straight in with the secret-in-the-turtleshell Fastback cases.

The netbook case has a transparent pocket to showoff your iPhone or iPod touch, and inside features their really interesting looking Grid-It organizer, which can also safely and snuggly stow your iPhone or iPod inside.

The Fastback is an iPhone case that opens in the back to reveal an ample amount of storage for a headset, cards, etc.

Video after the break!

After being Barely There last year, at CES 2010 TiPb wanted to know how much slimmer Case-Mate could go — turns out they could go Bare. You read that right, one of the big products on display for Case-Mate in 2010 was their entry into the iPhone skin market, and the twist is their version doesn’t require any application liquid, you just peel and apply.

Video of the skin being applied, after the break. And if you’re the guy who made a living selling the tiny little squirt bottles, please don’t comment spam us — we’re just the messenger….

NLU Products, makers of BodyGuardz, were gracious enough to take some time out at CES 2010 and show TiPb their four-way ScreenGuardz Privacy film for iPhone. Four-way means it won’t just shield your iPhone from prying eyes in portrait mode, but horizontal as well. Buh-bye over-the-shoulder airplane movie snooper!

Check out the video, after the break!

Inductive charging is the future, and one of the companies trying to bring it to the iPhone is Powermat. I say trying only because, unlike our friends over at CrackBerry.com, we won’t be able to just swap in an inductive battery and go about our business. To truly bring inductive to the iPhone, Apple will have to build it in the way Palm does with the Pre and Pixi.

But Apple is Apple, so companies like Powermat are working around them with cases. The TiPb Store has the 2009 Powermat models in stock, but coming later in 2010, they’re getting sleeker and adding a second, slightly longer case that includes an extended battery.

Powermat, and others, believe one day inductive charging will just be built into our counters, desks, cars, etc. Hopefully Apple includes it in the 4th generation iPhone. I know I want it.

CES 2010 sneak peak video after the break!

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Join us for a very special Round Robin and CES 2010 episode of iPhone Live guest staring PreCentral.net and Smartphone Expert Editor-in-Chief Dieter Bohn!

We’ll look at Palm’s big webOS, Palm Pre Plus, and Palm Pixi Plus announcements, and oh, yeah — Dieter’s got a Nexus One to talk about. Plus everything we saw on the showroom floor.

If you have any questions, leave a comment below, hit us up on Twitter @theiphoneblog, or better still — join us live in the chat room via http://www.imore.com/live

REMINDER: You can watch us live on your iPhone with the Ustream Viewer app [Free - iTunes link]. Just wait until the show starts (8pm ET) and search for iPhone. We’ll pop up. Literally.

Chat with you soon!

ZAGG, the makers of Invisible Shield, have diversified in a big way with their ZAGGbox video recorder, ZAGGsparq battery charger, and AppSpace service.

ZAGGbox pulls in all your analog video (including HD via component), gives you fast switching via a unified remote, and renders iPhone-compatible video you can send right to your device.

ZAGGsparq is a massive battery charger that re-charge an iPhone 4 times before it runs out of juice, and since it has 2 USB ports, it can charge your Bluetooth or any other compatible gadget at the same time.

AppSpace is an application discovery engine where you can go online to try and sort through the App Store’s massive catalog and find more of the stuff you like. It also supports Android, with BlackBerry, Palm, and Symbian coming soon.

Video of all three, after the break!

[YouTube video link]

Ion’s iType is a full sized — full. sized. — keyboard for the iPhone or iPod touch that comes bundled with an App Store app for easy text input. Output is another story — given the iPhone’s app sandboxing, you have to email or copy and paste the text into other apps. Ion is open to letting other apps use their hardware, however, so if Apple doesn’t get it together and offer standardized keyboard dock and BT protocols, and something like a Finger App to share document content, we’re hoping third parties can get at least part of it done themselves.

They also make a piano/synthesizer style iDiscover keyboard as well.

But enough philosophy, let’s get physical with the keyboard. And who better to try perform the ultimate typing test than our best frenemy CrackBerry Kevin. He puts it through its paces in the video below. Check it out after the break, and let us know what you think.

[YouTube video link]

The Motorola Endeavor HX1 is the latest salvo in the Bluetooth noise-reduction arms race, and it takes it to another level — reading the bone vibrations in your inner ear and digitally converting those vibrations into recognizable speech. That’s right, when regular microphones fail, when even noise-reduction won’t work, Motorola is actually turning off the microphone entirely and reproducing what you say based on sound waves in your skull. It won’t sound as good as a mic, however, but in a crowded place like the floor of CES 2010, rather than a dull, indistinguishable crowd roar, you can actually be heard.

Video after the break!

[UPDATE: And the TiPb Store folks told me they just got the Motorola Endeavor HX1 in stock, and it's on sale 31% off, if the video entices...]

[YouTube video link]

iHound [$2.99 - iTunes link] is an app that, if you lose your iPhone, will let you send it a message and then track it down via GPS. Sounds familiar, maybe, but it’s been around longer and doesn’t need a MobileMe account. The Cell Phone Junkie, Mickey Papillion talks me through it in the video below.

As iPhone Live! regulars know, I use a Blue Microphone Snowball for our podcast, so when they announced their 2nd generation, iPhone 3G/iPhone 3GS compatible Mikey, I was gravitationally pulled towards their booth for a quick look.

It’s small, it plugs into the iPhone dock, and they also offer a free Blue Fire field-recorder app in the iTunes App Store [Free - iTunes link]

The 2nd gen Mikey should ship this spring. Check out the video after the break, and note: this was recorded using a pre-production unit of that very mic!

With iMakeMyCase, Case-Mate is taking their popular case model and not only offering you hot, artist-based designs, but breaking apart those designs to their core elements and letting you customize and collage them to create your own unique variation.

There are lots of on-line tools provided, included spays, mirror effects, and if you’re not feeling particularly creative, reference designs by each artist.

Check out our walkthrough after the break!

The iPhone has made it’s first big, official splash at CES 2010, courtesy of the iLounge Pavilion, set up by the fine folks at iLounge. I’ve only spent half a day walking around so far, but you can’t throw an iPhone without hitting a major player at a big booth showing off some amazing new iPhone accessories.

Here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve seen so far:

• Etymotic, well known for their high-end in-ear headsets has incorporated the 3-button iPhone/iPod-style controller onto their cables giving you full volume, pause/play, etc. They’re also offering an entry-level model without the same system, but with excellent sound quality.
• HyperMac is offering a new external batteries with USB-out for iPhone.
• ExtremeMac is doing a range of charging as well, lots of options.
• Seidio is bringing the vibrant colored case love.
• Case-mate is offering a design-it-yourself option for cases, also a no-squirt-liquid-required body skin, and Hug, a non-proprietary inductive charging solution where you can buy their case and pad, or from another member of the consortium so you can mix and match. Nissan cup holders will also support it!
• Gelaskins is bringing in National Geographic and Marvel Comics licenses.
• Music skins is bringing Beatles licenses.
• Otterbox is offering lighter, but still armor-like solutions for those who want a little more convenience.
• Incipio is going with multiple materials and bold designs.

ics after the break!

Microsoft and Ford were showing off the third version of Ford Sync at CES, and Casey and Phil from Android Central and I jumped in and got a demo. The good news is that it works great. It plays your music, makes your phone calls, and alert the authorities in case of accident, and more…

The bad news is the “and more” doesn’t apply to iPhone and iPod touch owners since Apple hasn’t properly implemented all the Bluetooth control protocols. Also, SMS to voice isn’t implemented for the iPhone, and I’m guessing that has to do with the current SDK as well.

Still, the system looks slick and solid, supports multiple phones and music players, and lets you focus on your driving rather than fiddling with your devices. As more places make hands-free mandatory, it’s also going to be increasingly important.

While I look for iPhone stuff at CES, Dieter and the PreCentral.net crew went over to Palm’s presentation, and got the goods on 3D gaming, video recording, Verizon, and more — PreCentral.net’s Here are the highlights:

• Palm CES live blog coverage
• webOS 1.4 coming in February
• Palm Pre Plus, Palm Pixi Plus exclusive to Verizon with tethering
• Flash 10.1 for webOS
• Video recording for webOS
• 3D gaming with native APIs(plug-in development kit).
• Open distribution for webOS apps
• AND… PreCentral webOS App Gallery goes LIVE! (Congrats guys!)

Check it out and let us know what you think. Big news for Palm? Too incremental? Competitive enough for 2010?

I saw Microsoft’s massive booth at CES and a giant Bing sign so, optimistically, I went on over to talk with them while our friends from WMExperts hit up the devices. The Bing folks were great, but had no specific knowledge about Bing for iPhone other than there was an app and it did stuff but was kinda beta outside the US. Fair enough. So I headed over to the main reception and asked if there was anyone there from the Microsoft iPhone team. And that’s when it got funny. “What iPhone team?”

Eventually they sent me over to the Windows Phone counter, who just laughed at me and got annoyed that I was sent there.

Why am I posting this? Microsoft is one of, if not still the, biggest software maker in the world. Whether they offer a competing mobile platform or not, there are probably approaching 70 million iPhones on the market, and Microsoft provides Exchange ActiveSync, and apps like SeaDragon (okay, Microsoft Labs, but still), and Bing (which they’d like to be a big deal). That there was no one from Microsoft’s iPhone team at Macworld last year was silly but understandable. That there’s no one here at CES 2010 this year — or at least if there is, they’re not at all discoverable — is just dumb.

If you’re not going to do integrated offerings, if you’re going to be the “network nervous system” that services everyone, if you’re going to offer software and services for other popular platforms — show up and evangelize them. If you want to compete against Google and be taken seriously, if you’re going to be in the game — have some players show up.

Since the entire SPE team was here at CES in Las Vegas, it made perfect sense to take some time away from ogling gadgets and chatting up our friends in the blogosphere to record a podcast. We talk up what we’ve seen so far, including the Nexus One and Motorola Backflip; we also chatted a bit about what we’re hoping to see at Palm’s event today.

As you might have guessed, the show was recorded and hosted by our pal Mickey Papillon of TCPJ. Give it a listen!

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[Rene apologizes for quality of iPhone-taken pano, but felt the behind-the-scenes peak made up for the lack of photography skillz]

Digital Experiences is an event held the eve before CES 2010 officially kicks off, and as we’ve come to expect — there was a lot of iPhone in the room. From EA showing off their latest games to Sonos showing how completely they’ve gone in on iPhone, from Speck to Griffin to XtremeMac giving us sneak peaks at their upcoming gear from Powermat’s inductive charging solutions, all the way to Google’s massive Nexus One booth (okay, everything except that maybe!) the iPhone was in full force.

Check it out, after the jump!

Orbit aims to do for your iPhone what Syngergy does for Palm’s webOS — aggregate all your contacts and their status — but with an equal and opposite focus on notification management.

So, not only can you link together your friend’s contact info along with their Facebook, Twitter, etc., you can group them into various “orbits” (and each contact can be in more than one “orbit”), create all manner of filters, and raise or lower the “volume” of notification you receive.

So, you can set the volume of your raging editor in chief to “high” and your in-laws to “low”.

TiPb has discussed this before — after the rush to Push Notification, we have devices pinging and poping at us all the time and that can become as useless as no notifications.

Orbit [Free -- iTunes link] has just gone live in the App Store, check it out. Video after the break!

[YouTube video link]

EA Mobile’s Sims 3: World Adventure for iPhone brings an airport to your simulated town, first established in the original Sims 3 game, and you can now jump on a plane and visit France, Egypt, and China — and play mini-games like accelerometer air sickness avoidance — while you fly. (Yes, it’s fun!)

We don’t have all the details, but EA mentioned some way to capture image-based information from the original game and use that to load character info into the new game. If it’s as slick as it sounds, that’s a smart way to get around Apple’s no-sharing data sandbox for apps.

Either way, if you enjoyed the first iPhone Sims 3 game, EA is planning to give you more of what you loved — lots more, and they give TiPb a sneak peak look at it — after the jump!

[YouTube link]

EA Mobile showed TiPb some of the new gameplay that’s coming to Spore: Creatures for the iPhone and iPod touch, and it represents the next stage of evolution. Literally.

Picking up where Spore: Origins left of, your little life-form crawls from the primordial ooze, you have to negotiate similar challenges to last time, but now there are also bosses to contend with, and creatures you may just socialize with rather than savage (or be savaged by!)

It’s coming soon to the App Store. But we have a sneak peak video right after the break!

[YouTube Video Link]

UPDATE: According to WMExperts liveblog, it was a Tablet PC by HP running Windows 7 and called — wait for it — the HP Slate. Yes, named after Apple’s latest tablet name rumor. Looks chunky, and its using a desktop OS. Okay.

ORIGINAL: So the rumor is Steve is about to introduce a new tablet device — no, not Steve Jobs of Apple, but his nemesis Steve Ballmer of Microsoft — and he’s rumored to be doing it tonight at CES!

Our sibling site, WMExperts, has the details and Dieter and Phil will be there live covering Ballmer’s keynote at 9:30pm ET, 6:30pm PT, 2:30am GT (tomorrow morning, yeah?)

Will it be the crazy courier concept we saw before? More Tablet PC tomfoolery? Surface-to-go? And if Apple is unicorns, is this the pegasus?

And does this have any effect on Apple’s rumored iTablet show on Jan. 27? Or does Apple just ignore what everyone else is doing, as usual, and show up with what they got?

That’s right TiPb ‘verse, for the first time ever I’m hitting CES with the rest of the Smartphone Experts crew — because for the first time ever, Apple’s not at Macworld, Macworld isn’t in January, and iPhone stuff will be at CES!

If you’re going to be there as well, if you’re an App Store developer, an accessory maker, a fellow blogger, an Apple engineer with a secret HD iPhone or tablet-esque device to leak, or — and especially — a fellow TiPb member, ping me and let me know. I’m looking to fit in as much as is inhumanly possible.

All major iPhone and related stories will of course go up right here, and as you know there are a ton of ways to follow TiPb’s feed.

I’ll also be tweeting everything else meta-style from @reneritchie, including whatever behind the scenes shenanigans and competitive insights I can sneak out. (tag-line, nothing will stay in Vegas!)

Also keep an eye out for our editor-in-chief Dieter Bohn (@backlon), Kevin Michaluk (@crackberrykevin), Matt Miller (@palmsolo), Phil Nickinson (@philnickinson) as they cover everything else for CrackBerry.com, PreCentral.net, NokiaExperts.com, AndroidCentral.com, and WMExperts.com, as well as our Round Robin co-hort, Mickey Papillon (@tcpj_mickey) who might just get us back on the mic again.

See ya there, or we’ll bring it to ya here!

UPDATE: Ryan Block returns to Engadget to smash this rumor.

At no point did Gary even remotely imply that Apple would be present at a future CES — let alone state flatly that Apple “will be there” in 2010.

Oh, WSJ…

ORIGINAL. The Wall Street Journal is reporting, almost off-handedly, that Apple is planning to attend CES 2010, a trade show it has avoided up until now, and arguably eclipsed in 2007 when it announced the original iPhone at the then similarly timed Macworld Expo.

Apple pulled out of future Macworlds, causing the expo to change focus and time slots for 2010, but the idea of Apple actually showing up at CES instead? To quoth Dieter: Cats and dogs — living together!

The meat of the WSJ’s story is actually that Steve Jobs has been invited to Keynote at CES but isn’t returning their phone calls. While Jobs owned the spotlight at Macworld before handing the final show over to Phil Schiller in 2009, Jobs would be one of several Keynotes at CES, including lovable competitor Steve Ballmer of Microsoft.

Would Jobs settle for “one of”? Would Apple, after leaving Macworld and saying they prefer to set their own schedule for special events, and that they reach more people via the Apple Stores every week anyway, really want to return to almost exactly the same formula with CES?

We doubted it, and still don’t believe what our eyes are reading.

With Apple announcing that Macworld 2009 would be its last, rumors began to fly that maybe CES 2010 would get Steve Jobs’ attention instead. TiPb still isn’t buying that — given Apple’s stated reasons, it makes no more sense for them than Macworld.

However, now word comes that iLounge has begun working with the CEA (the organization behind CES) to create an iPhone (and iPod) “iLounge Pavilion” at CES as a rallying and gathering point for exhibitors — perhaps in lieu of Macworld 2010.

iLounge seems to feel this is necessary to help proactively preserve and project forward the iPhone and iPod community given the perhaps uncertain future of Macworld.

Macworld (the magazine, not expo, though they share the same parent company) editor Jason Snell, however, on Twitter expressed concern that iLounge might have crossed a line beyond merely being proactive.

Hearts and souls are likely still hoping for a strong and vibrant Macworld next year, but are pragmatic minds and wallets turning more towards CES? And what lines should — or shouldn’t — be crossed when it comes to media (new or old) covering events, or each other, while having or making alliances with competitive events?

Apple Insider is reporting that Apple is packing up the graceful booths and elegant displays, and taking Steve’s winnebago to CES next year:

Sources close to the company have indicated to AppleInsider that the move is a done deal, a remarkable turn of events given that CES has long been dominated by Microsoft’s product announcements issued in keynotes delivered by Bill Gates and now by CEO Steve Ballmer.

TiPb has long felt that Apple has long felt it was too aloof for the tacky lights and hollow glitz of Vegan and CES, but could the times really be a changing that much? And if Apple does go to CES 2010, which Steve will give the Keynote, Ballmer or… Jobs?