That sounds like some Google shenanigans in the mix. I wonder what the kick-back is.

Of course, the absolute number of Cr-48 laptops in existence right now is vanishingly small. I guess they're "experimenting" to see how people actually use them. (And they'd use them a lot more if the touchpad didn't totally and completely suck.)

Do they have a feature that automatically moves the mouse pointer to ad links then?

Preorders for the CDMA iPhone are starting on Thursday. A firmware update to 4.2.6 has appeared on the Apple update site as well.

This must be the "4.2.5" possibility I saw the Dev Team mention. Apparently they're waiting for 4.3 for a proper untethered jailbreak for the newer devices. Though you'd be hard pressed to find that mentioned anywhere.

I wonder how it will go with a JB for the Verizon model. No doubt a lot of people will also want an unlock to use the device on Sprint.

4.2.6 just has "Bug fix to ensure Personal Hotspot data usage is accurately reported" as the change and its only for the CDMA iPhone 4 so far.

Has anyone even asked this yet.... Is anyone going to pick up a VZ iPhone?

Reports indicate pre-orders are going strong, with VZ's site failing to keep up with traffic early this AM.

I suppose there's no reason to think that sales won't be as strong as they have been on ATT in the past. At least over the long term. I think this is really going to pad out Apple's bottom line.

To put it in perspective, VZ's existing customer base is at least 3x the total population of Canada.

17 hours, and the first batch of phones is already sold out. Only existing Verizon customers could order today, and it looks like quite a few did. Servers crashed under the load just as they tend to do whenever AT&T started accepting orders for a new iPhone.

And 4.2.6 is what all the review units had. Sounds like thats the shipping firmware, and it was posted for anyone doing clean restores of the phone once they get it. Current rumors have 4.3 coming out sometime before February 16th, to allow people to subscribe to The Daily. For now, it's being provided for free, thanks to Verizon sponsoring it.

Verizon didn't report numbers this morning, but they did indicate the iPhone 4 proeorders broke their first day sales records in the first 2 hours. Those first two hours were 3am-5am Eastern time (12am-2am Pacific). Verizon must be really happy, as this happened with relatively low marketing costs for them, compared to say the amount they spent on "Droid" marketing and commercials for other various phones. Getting the iPhone years after it came out may benefit their bottom line more then being the initial launch partner.

I would have thought they'd need to pay Apple some large sum for Apple to make the CDMA iPhone?

Why? Selling millions more units wouldn't be enough motivation?

When talking millions of units sold. The cost of revising the design is lost in the noise.

Normally yes but this is Apple and the iPhone. Telling Verizon that they have to give them a large sack of cash to get a CDMA iPhone made even though Apple would profit greatly from it wouldn't be too outlandish IMO.

I'd expect the same from any other company that had such a successful product as the iPhone which was in great demand. Apple is a company and out to profit at the end of the day and even Verizon would still make a killing even after paying Apple.

Apple did make it very clear at the Verizon announcement that the phone was not exclusive to Verizon. Odds are, they may see it as a necessary step to keep the growth going, both here in the US via Verizon, and also in a few other countries where CDAM has a large user base. China and India both seem to have enough people on CDMA to help justify the new phone. The other option was to wait for LTE rollout worldwide to reach these users, and that is likely to take years. This would provide more time for Android or other platforms to capture a large chunk of CDMA users, like what happened here in the US with Verizon.

And it's already begun, AT&T and Verizon are now running competing ads about the iPhone, with Apple standing to benefit either way.

Apple's commercial, showing both phones doing the same thing, clearly a neutral stance.


Verizon's poking fun at AT&T's call quality issues


AT&T boasting about simultaneous voice and data

I'm sure Apple would have done the CDMA phone earlier if it weren't for the exclusivity agreement with ATT. The Verizon customer base is just too big to pass up.

This helps build additional loyalty for the platform and when LTE finally does come around, Apple will realize the repeat sales. Something that wouldn't be as easy with Android anyway, because there are so many companies competing with that platform, that it's very easy for one of them to get lost in any given product revision.

So what are you guys thinking as far as when Apple will start doing LTE? iPhone 5? 6? 7?

I'm certain the next one won't be, and frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if the one after that wasn't.

However, I hear most tech journalists cite Apple's slow adoption of 3G as a reason they'll wait for a year after LTE is prevalent. I don't think they're going to do quite the same thing this time. When they held off on the switch before, there was no competition in their space. I think they'll have to move to LTE quicker than they'd like just to be able to match features.

I think "iPhone 6" or whatever next year's model is called will be the earliest they'll add 4G.

None of the US networks are even close to maximizing the speed possible with 3G and 3.5G technology, I'm not sure I'm going to hold my breath for LTE.

There would be no purpose in deploying LTE on a phone this summer. While it might be available in pockets of the US, it's not going to be widespread internationally. Most of the Android phones that come out with support for it will be all but abandoned in 4 to 7 months after release.

I'd say iPhone 6 (summer 2012) at the very earliest. At this point I can't see them unleashing anything in iPhone 5 that would make me switch from my iPhone 4. Unless of course I can sell it (it's factory unlocked and works everywhere) and upgrade for next to no money, pretty much in prep for the following year's upgrade.

I'm pretty much assuming the iPhone in 2012 will go to LTE. Right now, LTE is very limited, and data only. By 2012, there should be enough widespread deployment, and voice will likely be figured out by then.

What I'm curious about is if Apple will use the fake 4G term, by having the 2011 phone show 4G in the status bar when connected to a higher speed HSPA+ network. To me, I still think it's a marketing sham. But, if they don't go along with it, some consumers might fall for the 3G/4G trap and start avoiding the phone.

I think the biggest question is whether we'll see a unified (UMTS(GSM)/CDMA) iPhone in the near future...

I'm a little confused by this statement. Are you thinking of WiMax? It's not like all those phones are going to suddenly stop getting 4G data one day. They use LTE, which is going to be the standard going forward.


I doubt it, unless Apple really had this Verizon deal in mind a long time ago. I'm guessing development on this year's iPhone started too long ago for that. And as we seem to agree, it's more likely that they'll just make a 4G phone in 2012.

No, they'll continue to work fine, but they're likely not going to get software updates, since they'll be made by companies that have zero vested interest in the unification and longevity of the platform and only want to push newer handsets every few months. What these guys care about the platform is 1. that it's free and 2. that it has Google's brand attached to it.



They definitely have been working on Verizon for a long time (long in the world of tech anyway). But when I said "near future" I didn't necessarily mean for this summer. Even with an LTE-capable product next year, it's still got to support UMTS/GSM for global reach. But, I wouldn't rule out a unified device this year. I'm not much for betting, so I can't really offer odds, I just wouldn't be too surprised if it happened.

On Verison's iPhones, I take it that phone calls interrupt whatever surfing might be going on.

I mean it would suck if callers got a busy signal if they happened to call while you were watching your favorite Youtube video.

For both Verizon and AT&T, if the phone is on the 2G network, phone calls will go right to voicemail if data is being used. For the Verizon phone on 3G, a call will ring the phone, and interrupt the data session if the call is answered. On AT&T 3G, the call won't interrupt data, but it may slow it down a little for the duration of the call.

Looks like the chipset supports GSM and CDMA, so that could be a sign of things to come.

Apparently even though there seems to be very little difference between the AT&T and Verizon models, there's a lot of difference under the hood.

Which chipset? I mean, I know there's a chipset that does, but I was under the impression that the Verizon iPhone was not using it. That chipset (and in the future possible others like it) are why I wouldn't be surprised to see a unified iPhone sooner rather than later.

EDIT: Ok, I've seen the iFixit tear-down and they ARE using the Qualcomm chip I was thinking about. But they're missing the other parts to get GSM working though. Seems like a pretty strong indicator that iPhone 5 will be universal though.