Gizmodo: Don't Buy the Verizon iPhone 4

[brooklynite]

As much as I'd like to switch, this is worth pondering:

The day that Verizon gets the iPhone will be remembered as glorious by everybody who's dropped 12 calls in a row, been taunted by meaningless signal bars and just plain had a miserable AT&T experience. But they shouldn't buy one.

Let's keep in mind what Apple—or rather, Verizon—is announcing, precisely. A new carrier for the iPhone 4. That's it. Not a new product. That's why Apple is ceding the stage to Verizon. If it was a truly new product, Apple would do all the talking.

Apple will announce a new iPhone in June, as they have every year since 2008. It'll go on sale later that month, or in early July, as it has every year. That's six months from now. And it'll be better than the iPhone 4 in some tangible way. Maybe not on the order of the leap from the 3GS to the iPhone 4, but it'll have something new to offer. And everybody will want it, because that's how things seem to work with Apple: There's just enough new to make whatever Apple product you've currently got in your hand feel deficient in some way.

But the people who just bought on an iPhone 4 with Verizon will be locked into new 2-year contracts. Their new phones, though maybe better at holding calls better than their AT&T counterparts, will still be old news just a few months after birth. And what if the iPhone does the same thing to Verizon it did to AT&T? Let everybody else be an early adopter.

http://gizmodo.com/5729273/dont-buy-the-verizon-iphone-4?skyline=true&s=i

[onehandle]

1. I'm going to hold off until I can see what effect it will have on their network.

I want to see how they handle the iPhone and dealing with Apple in general.

I'm locked in with AT&T until the end of the year anyway, so that should be plenty of time.

Additionally, I am happy with my AT&T service. I drove through multiple states recently streaming Internet radio the whole way. I was pretty impressed with that.

I am not impressed with the fact that on this Verizon iPhone, you cannot have simultaneous data and voice. Hopefully the next version will have this capability.

[Stinky The Clown]

2. I expect Verizon will be able to handle it. They're starting on their G3 network.

I have a Blackberry Storm right now. The internet is *painfully* slow on it, but I attribute some of that to Blackberry's awful browser.

The Verizon iPhone will be able to serve as a wifi hotspot. The AT&T version can't do that.

The AT&T iPhone can multitask with the phone and internet able to function at the same time.

Prices will be the same from both carriers.

Seems pretty fair to me.

[onehandle]

3. Apple is supposedly rolling out 'Personal Hotspot' in iOS update 4.3 for all carriers.

AT&T is 'evaluating' the situation.