And Steve Jobs Said, ‘Let There Be a Verizon iPhone’

Posted on Jan 11, 2011

Verizon Wireless

Verizon Wireless President and CEO Dan Mead onstage in New York City for the announcement Tuesday that his company and Apple will deliver the iPhone 4 on Verizon.

From the dawn of time, or somewhere around there, everyone from Uncle Mike to that friend of a friend of someone in accounting has been certain that next month Verizon will get the iPhone. For the first time ever, they’re right.

Verizon’s iPhone will be exactly like AT&T’s iPhone, only it will be able to make phone calls (har har).

Actually, there are only two differences reported so far. The buttons have moved ever so slightly (thanks to different antenna requirements), meaning if you switch you’ll probably need a new case. More important, the iPhone on Verizon will have the ability to act as a Wi-Fi hotspot for other devices, a feature many Android phones on Big Red already have.

A word of caution: Apple will almost certainly announce a new version of the iPhone this summer, leaving early switchers stuck in a two-year contract with an outdated device.

Also, Verizon is in the process of launching its new 4G LTE network, which is much faster than Sprint’s WiMax network and the impostor “4G” of AT&T and T-Mobile (what those two call 4G is really more like 3G-plus). Verizon is set to release a number of very exciting 4G handsets and the iPhone is not one of them. If you want to take advantage of Verizon’s fast new network and do FaceTime, you’ll have to wait.

More info about the new iPhone can be found here.  —PZS

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