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]

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]

My laundry list of issues with the original iPhone has slowly been addressed. Apple has basically covered them all now that instant messaging, copy & paste and improved battery life with the new iPhone 3G. But there’s still one giant glaring problem. And that’s AT&T.

Those crooks at AT&T were so desperate to get the iPhone, that they got suckered into a bad deal, and they’ve been taking it out on the customers ever since. At the time, they had to do something. Because if Verizon picked up the iPhone, AT&T would be dead in the water. But they gave up too much.

So now if an iPhone 3G owner wants to upgrade to the iPhone 3GS (now being called the iPhone 3G$), they have to shell out $699. That is absolutely outrageous (Ars Technica has posted some additional info from AT&T about the pricing structure). And it can’t make Apple happy. While that may keep 3G users locked into their AT&T contracts without AT&T having to subsidize another phone for them, those are additional units that AT&T is preventing Apple from selling. (more…)