/ Rob Beschizza / 11:21 pm Wed Feb 2, 2011

Verizon iPhone 4 reviews

Verizon's iPhone is in the wild. The results are as expected: same phone, better network: NYT. Wired. Daring Fireball. WSJ. Engadget. TechCrunch. Laptop Mag. Bloomberg. MacWorld.

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  1. I honestly could not say this about a lot of things, but it is quite telling when I cheer from the sidelines for company I do not even like to “Do its worst!” as a competitor.

    Its like having an abscess tooth in Medieval times, except now I can choose the blacksmith with smaller hands.

  2. I fucking HATE Verizon. When I was young and dumb and had terrible credit and got my first cell phone, they made me put down a $1000 deposit. Flash forward two years, and they tell me there was no record of any deposit. After dozens of hours on the phone, escalating all the way to the VP level, the best they could offer me was $500 in company credit. They are crooks and liars, and I would see their company utterly destroyed if only I could. I tell absolutely everyone I can, and warn them away from such a criminally unethical, untrustworthy company. FUCK VERIZON. Verizon was remarkably easy to cancel, but I’d guess the fact that the Verizon kiosk I canceled at was literally right in front of an Apple Store might have had something to do with that. My only hope is that my warnings wind up costing them a lot more than what they stole from me.

    I’m on an iPhone with AT&T now, and I have to say I hate that I have to pay $130 if I want an unlimited plan. Seems pretty excessive. Their customer service is definitely better than Verizon, even aside from my one nightmare experience, and both the coverage and the signal is pretty decent, though I don’t live in San Fran or NYC. Verizon would save me $10 a month, sure, at the expense of the world’s worst customer service (a reputation well-deserved). But then there’s the third option: T Mobile would save me $30 each and every month, which is enough to buy an iPhone every two years even without a plan.

    That said, I’d be more likely to switch to an Android phone, short of Apple bringing the iPhone to T Mobile. Sure, I’d rather get another iPhone, but I only have a dozen or so paid apps, so I could let it go. Especially since they are not only vastly cheaper than Verizon and AT&T, but I have never heard a complaint about T-Mobile worse than ‘all American telecoms suck’. Sure, their service won’t be as good in rural areas, but that’s not really a deal breaker for me. I have never heard anyone say they really liked either AT&T or Verizon, though I’ve heard many horror stories. And AT&T being fully 30% more expensive? Totally unacceptable.

    T-Mobile getting the iPhone would be severely bad news for their competition.

    1. AT&T is far from being a knight in shining armor. As of this moment, I am in the middle of a battle over my credit with AT&T as they exploit loopholes in credit reporting to impose damage to my credit after I spent 2 years dealing with their legally questionable practices (charging me to send me spam and denying it), and an additional year fighting them over balances. I bashed them publicly and I’m sure they know about it. I tracked down various bits of proof of their questionable practices that they had a hard time denying (they never really denied it, mostly danced around it). And they charged me two cancellations (yes, two) plus months of late fees (I was never late) after telling me I owed nothing when I cancelled. I’m actually close to a lawsuit at this point because I’m tired of dealing with it after 5+ years. Never mind their terrible network.

      Verizon has some terrible account systems. One small screwup can cause the entire account to be in a damaged state that requires the account to be recreated. I’ve had to deal with this a few times. However, Verizon has never tried to rob me or damage my reputation (credit, etc).

      All of them are crooks. Your best bet is to find the one you are comfortable with screwing you in the ass. I choose Verizon because I get a discount and they are one of the few that hasn’t tried to screw me over (yet).

  3. Interesting, Boing Boing gadgets news is about 99% for apple products and other brands 1%.
    Where are the news about the new Android tablet? Google presented yesterday the Motorola Xoom running Android 3.0 (Honeycomb).

  5. The summary is inaccurate. The correct summary is “same phone, better cell phone network”

    Or “same phone, worse data network”

  6. @Grimnir: T-Mobile may have great prices, but their network is sadly lacking in scope. There are phones I would love (the Nexus S for example), but to get it on T-Mobile would suck for me. I go up north for skiing or vacation and even AT&T and Verizon aren’t that strong (Verizon seems to cover most of my normal ski areas better than AT&T). If T-Mobile had better coverage, I’d switch, but they don’t. They also don’t have the iPhone (and I’m not going to lose 3G just to jailbreak and unlock my iPhone to use it on T-Mobile).

    1. Sprint has a fantastic network that falls back to Verizon when in roaming, has unlimited data while roaming and no roaming charges. Not to mention the drastically cheaper plans and the most extensive 4G/WiMAX network today. If you’re thinking about an Android phone, the HTC Evo and Samsung Galaxy are pretty much top of the line right now. I’m a huge fan of the new Sprint network.

  7. I’ve been a Verizon customer for 3 1/2 years. In that time I’ve dropped signal exactly twice, in a valley in the Adirondacks and when right up under the copper roof of a church. For me, their coverage is effectively perfect, unlike the pathetic Sprint phones we’re issued for work which only work when you’re hanging your head out a window and holding your mouth just so.

  8. @Jim Rizzo: I’ve been running my iPhone 3GS on T-mobile for about a year and a half, unlocked/jailbroken of course. My service is amazing. I can honestly say that I have had 2 or 3 dropped calls in that time, and even though I travel a lot, the coverage is fantastic. Only when I go out into the sticks of East Texas to see family do I lose signal. I’ve been a T-mobile customer for about 10 years and love their service. I will, however, be switching to Verizon next week. Keeping up with hacked versions of iOS has just gotten tiring. Perhaps when I move from Edge to proper 3G I’ll see what I’ve been missing.

  9. Let’s wait until there are millions of people using Verizon iPhones. Then we’ll see how good their network really is.

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