The Verizon iPhone is here!!!!.......Well almost.

[FatherWiggles]

   

 

    Today is an exciting day. After 3 years of waiting and countless blogs’ false predictions the iPhone 4 is finally on Verizon with a release date of February 10th and pre-order date of February 3rd. I personally have been waiting and waiting for an iPhone to come to Verizon and will be ordering mine asap. The announcement was made today during a 30 min Press conference held by Verizon. Surprisingly no one from apple was at the event. At 11:06 eastern time it was finally announced and the bloggers and the Wall Street Journal finally hit the nail on the head after countless fails at guess the release. Readers began to get the Boy who cried Wolf mentality about the whole situation. The new Verizon iPhone gets upgrades of sorts in the fact that they had to reconfigure the antenna to support the cdma chip the phone now sports, fixing the antenna gate issues that plagued the AT&T iPhone (crosses fingers). As well as the ability to be used as a Mifi of sorts supporting multiple device connections.  A downgrade of sorts that this iPhone receives is due to the cdma network. You will not be able to surf and make a phone call at the same time. This is a CDMA ONLY phone no gsm or LTE. The issue that follows this though is the fact that this makes over seas travel a little less savory.  My personal prediction is that the next iphone with be a cdma/gsm/lte phone so that it will work on all networks. Or it will be a strictly LTE device. 

 

    Some people are a bit confused on why it took so long for Verizon to get the iPhone. What they don’t understand is that Apple offered the iPhone to Verizon in the beginning. The reason Verizon was not the original carrier is due to logistics with Verizon wanting their branding and bloatware on the device. Apple declined and AT&T prospered. That in hindsight was one of the worst decisions Verizon could have ever made. Although they have been able to learn from network mistakes AT&T  made through not having the proper network infrastructure to support such a device . We can only hope that they have learned from this mistake and not overlooked it.

 

    We can only guess that when Apple has their conference later this month to release the new iPad it will have a cdma radio so that we don’t have to use the Verizon mifi  with the “Verizon” iPad. I’m going to go on a quick tangent in the fact that I never quite saw the appeal of the Verizon iPad as in this world we are striving for minimalism in our tech life, yet this gives you an extra piece of hardware to carry around, as small as it is. The small form factor while nice also lends itself to being lost easily. If you carry an Android device as well as Verizon iPad setup you might as well throw your money in a river as you could have just tethered to your Android device and bought a cheaper wifi iPad. (End Tangent)

 

   All in all I hope the Verizon iPhone is stable, Verizon has learned from AT&T’s mistakes., and above all I hope the new release of the Verizon iPhone creates a healthy competition between carriers again thus keeping prices reasonable.

[THE (jb) CAPE]

The streaming is a compliment to the disc service I think. The streaming Netflix Is nice on the phone because if I am bored somewhere I can watch an episode of family guy or I can start a movie on my Q watch a half hour of it. And then pick up exactly where I left off later at home on the PS3 or the 360. The Netflix app Is badass! I'm glad the exclusivity deal with AT&T is up because iPhone will eventually be on every carrier and eventually I will switch to sprint and pay 50 bucks less a month.

[LudaToke]

I can see the Netflix streaming being a nice feature but at the same time my response to netflix in Canada is just "meh".  We just got it on consoles and the library isn't worth the $8/month they are asking for it.  All of the movies are extremely old or stuff I'm just not interested in seeing.  There are barely any TV shows either.  I never watched Lost while it was on and I would like to go through the series but Netflix North doesn't even have season 1.  Fail.

 

Smartphones are still in their infancy and nowhere close to reaching their full potential.  Perhaps in another 5 years they will continue to progress to the point where surfing the net or watching a video isn't a small, slow, choppy and pixelated mess mess.  At that point I would be more interested in their features but most like too old to stay in touch with current technology.

[Transience8985]

Yeah, having Netflix streaming in the lab has been nice on the occasions I used it too.  I like being able to watch a movie if I'm stuck there waiting on something late at night.

[FatherWiggles]

I have to agree with trans on this one. If I didn't use my phone to keep my ADD ass on task I wouldn't have a job. I also play alot of games while on the pot. I also use it in a pinch to help someone on their pc via logmein. netflix and hulu are going to be big friends of mine on the iPhone. Being as I can watch it on the go and I can run it into my car stereo and video screen for whenever the wife and I make spawn.

[Transience8985]

Besides being a music player, I use my iPod Touch a lot in the lab.  It has a lot of good reference apps on it, and it doubles as my calculator since the nice graphing calculator I had took a shit on me a few months ago.  There are some nice to do/organizer apps that help me keep straight what I need to do each day and what can wait if there's no time.  There's a computer in the lab, but it's attached to some instruments so 90% of the time it's in use by someone else. 

 

It's also a good bathroom companion, because it's nice to check out stories on IGN, Destructoid, etc. while taking a shit.  Always have reading material.  Also it has some great games on it, many of which I got for free.

 

Web browsing is a pain, but on the small screen you just have to get used to using zoom in/out to see what you want.  I kind of see these iOS devices and other smart phones as the swiss army knife of electronic devices.  You usually buy them for a few different functions, but as you use them you discover other ways they're useful.

[RED RING]

I'm with you 100% Canadian. Like I said before, I'll concede the fact that if I didn't have a computer with webernet access in front of me all day at work, I MIGHT have a slight more interest in one. However, like you, I've had more than 1 person try to show me stuff on their iphone and I've yet to be impressed. 1 guy couldn't even get it to work before we both lost interest.

 

I get the idea behind it. I get the usefulness it has, but I also see that the ipad does it all, and more, and better other than being able to put it in your pocket. Computer phone only has 1 advantage IMO, that's on the fly look something up.  On a road trip I would rather bring my ipad along, but just being out and about and needing to quickly look up an address or something, ok I see how that could be useful. Of course there is always 411 as well, but I'm sure you could look up other shit too on the fly.

[LudaToke]

I agree that Blackberry comes in a distant last place when it comes to apps but all the apps in the world come in a distant last place when compared to my PC or Laptop that I'm connected to for 90% of the day.  The apps on the ipad are some of the best because they can make use of the bigger screen and I haven't really used them since I downloaded them.  When I first downloaded them and gave them a try I thought "that's neat" and then never touched them again.  They didn't seem like a necessity.  Even browsing the internet on a smartphone is just frustrating.

[FatherWiggles]

in defence of droid and apple vs blackberry apps on the blackerry are nothing compared to the apps on the droid and iphone.. Hell even palm had a better app store than blackberry.

[LudaToke]

I have a Blackberry smartphone and I really like it but I only like it because the company I work for pays for it.  If the company didn't pay for it I couldn't justify spending the $50 to $70 a month it would cost.  BBM is awsome to stay in touch with my wife while I am travelling for work but once again not worth me paying the price of it myself.  I find the apps frustrating and limited on such a small device.  They aren't essentials and must haves to my every day life.

 

My sister in law's boyfriend was trying to show me youtube videos on his iphone 4 over the holidays.  It looked grainy and awful.  I just picked up the ipad and asked him to show me on that instead.

[Travers36]

Unlimited on Verizon here is truly unlimited. I made sure of that before I got my Droid.  The phone isn't available until the 10th of February because that's the offical end of the exclusive deal with ATT apparently.  I don't know that I want an Iphone, but the old lady probably will when it's time for her upgrade as her parents have them and she wants to the facetime chat shit.  I found a few for the Droid but it's a bit silly without a front facing camera