Everyone seems to be getting all hyped up about the lines (or lack of) for the Verizon iPhone today. But there are several reasons why this is really a non-story.

Weather

It’s been an abnormally cold winter throughout the U.S. The high in Santa Fe, NM today is 28. In Dallas, TX it’s 34. In Birmingham, AL it’s 29. No one wants to be outside standing in a line. The original iPhone launched on a sunny day in June.

Contracts

The state of wireless service in the U.S. requires costly and lengthy contracts. It would have been foolish to have expected a flood of customers from other networks on day one of the iPhone being on Verizon. As contracts do expire there will be a steady flow of defectors as long as early reports of improved service persist.

Availability

The initial iPhone launch was only available at Apple retail stores, of which there were a couple hundred at the most. The Verizon iPhone is available at all of the Apple stores as well as at the several thousand Verizon Wireless stores. (more…)

The New York Times’ Tech columnist, David Pogue, puts the brand new Verizon iPhone through its paces.

And to answer everyone’s question, the Verizon iPhone is nearly the same as AT&T’s iPhone 4 — but it doesn’t drop calls. For several million Americans, that makes it the holy grail.

I took the Verizon iPhone to five cities, including the two Bermuda Triangles of AT&T reception: San Francisco and New York. Holding AT&T and Verizon iPhones side by side in the passenger seat of a car, I dialed 777-FILM simultaneously, and then rode around until a call dropped. (Why that number? Because I wanted to call a landline, eliminating the other person’s cell reception from the equation. Also, Mr. Moviefone can carry the entire conversation by himself, so I could concentrate on the testing.)

In San Francisco, the AT&T phone dropped the call four times in 30 minutes of driving; the Verizon phone never did. The Verizon iPhone also held its line in several Manhattan intersections where the AT&T call died. At a Kennedy airport gate, the AT&T phone couldn’t even find a signal; the Verizon dialed with a smug yawn.

Most impressively, the Verizon iPhone effortlessly made calls in the Cellphone Signal Torture Chamber of Doom: my house.

[via @zeldman]

Verizon is not holding back with their new ads.

Oh, and pre-orders for the Verizon iPhone ran out in less than a day. Can’t wait to see how long it will be until analysts start revising their estimates.

[via TechCrunch]

There’s not a whole lot that needs to be said.

It’s the same phone. The only difference is the network. And Verizon’s network is better.

It’s certainly a Verizon iPhone, but it’s not the Verizon iPhone that I’ve been waiting for. The Verizon faithful will probably have to hold out until July for that one.

[via Gruber]

Apple products and Lego. What could be better?

[via Gruber]

The newest issue of Wired has a profile on Jimmy Lai, the man behind the Taiwanese news animation company Next Media Animation (NMA). The crudeness and sensationalism are what make the videos hilarious, but the speed with which they create the videos is what’s truly amazing.

Here is the Apple antenna-gate video, which is considered to be the best animation that NMA has done to date.

If I had an iPhone downloading The Big Picture app would be the first thing I’d do today. But alas, I do not. So hurry it up Verizon.

[via Cameron Moll]