Everything You Need To Know About The Verizon iPhone 4

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The four-year-long Verizon iPhone rumor’s reign of terror has ended. With an official announcement today—official!—we can get down to brass tacks and take a look at all the details, specs, facts and figures. Let’s dance.

Pricing and Availability

Verizon’s iPhone will be available online and in Verizon and Apple stores on Thursday, February 10th. Pre-orders will be available “to Verizon Wireless customers only” through Verizon’s website “on or around February 3rd.”

There will be a 16GB version for $200 with a two-year Verizon contract and a 32GB version for $300 with a two-year Verizon contract. You’ll be able to purchase the iPhone off-contract, though Verizon hasn’t released pricing. AT&T sells the iPhone 4 models off-contract for $599 and $699, respectively.

Verizon hasn’t announced monthly service plan pricing yet. However, current Verizon smartphone voice plans start at $40 per month for 450 minutes. Text messaging can be added starting at $5 per month for 250 messages. Web access must be added at either $15 per month for 150 megabytes of data transfer or $30 per month for unlimited data.

Current Verizon customers will be eligible for the $200 subsidized price if their two-year contract is up. There will be no early upgrade opportunities. Customers who want to upgrade to the Verizon iPhone before their existing two-year Verizon contract is up will have to pay full retail price for the phone.

(More on Time.com: Verizon’s iPhone: A Marriage Years in the Making)

Tech Specs

The Verizon iPhone holds pretty true to the iPhone 4 that’s available on AT&T. There are a few subtle differences; most notably that the Verizon iPhone only works in the U.S. on Verizon’s 3G network and a handful of other countries. You won’t be able to talk and surf the web at the same time, either, which is a current limitation of CDMA technology.

You will, however, be able to use the Verizon iPhone as a personal Wi-Fi hotspot with up to five other devices, though the company hasn’t mentioned if that feature will cost extra or not. It generally runs $20 per month extra on several of Verizon’s other smartphones.

AT&T iPhone owners will be able to access any apps they’ve purchased on a Verizon iPhone. Voicemail messages can be manually backed up and transferred over using Apple’s iTunes software.

Intangibles

What does this mean for AT&T?

It’ll probably lose some people right away, but I’d guess that not as many people will defect as it seems. Many of us are still locked into some sort of contract (the early termination fee starts at $325 and decreases by $10 per month for each month you’ve served in your contract), some will still need the ability to use their iPhones worldwide, and some won’t want to give up AT&T’s higher theoretical data speeds and the ability to use the web and voice features at the same time.

AT&T’s network woes won’t magically disappear overnight, either. Once enough people either leave AT&T for Verizon or join Verizon instead of AT&T, we’ll hopefully start to see congestion decrease. But it could take months for things to level out.

What does this mean for Verizon?

Aside from the fact that Verizon will probably sell a ton of iPhones, there are other factors to consider. For starters, iPhone sales will eat into Verizon’s sales of every other smartphone it stocks. Android phones will probably take the biggest hit, but existing BlackBerry phones and the Windows Phone 7 devices that’ll be available on Verizon this year will suffer as well.

(More on Time.com: Apple’s Hits and Misses So Far)

Verizon’s network, on the other hand, will probably be fine. The brilliance of offering a 3G iPhone instead of pushing a 4G iPhone is that many of the other smartphones that Verizon’s selling this year—Android phones especially—will be 4G phones. The more handsets that use Verizon’s new, fat-pipe 4G network, the more open its 3G network will be for iPhone use.

What does this mean for the iPhone 5?

This is, in my opinion, the most interesting question. Apple historically brings out a new iPhone around June. Assuming the company will roll out the iPhone 5 in a few short months, will it only be available on AT&T or will it be available on Verizon as well?

It’d be good for AT&T to have the exclusive on the iPhone 5, and almost negative for Verizon to have the iPhone 5 at the same time, given that people who rushed out to purchase the first Verizon iPhone wouldn’t be able to get the iPhone 5 without paying dearly for the upgrade. That’s probably the least of Verizon’s worries, though.

Now if the iPhone 5 is a 4G phone, on the other hand, it could be positioned as a different type of product class by both AT&T and Verizon. Something tells me Apple may sit this round of 4G out, though, given its track record of waiting for certain technologies to mature. We may not see a 4G iPhone on any network until next year.

What does this mean for other carriers?

When asked if the CDMA iPhone was exclusive to Verizon, Apple COO Tim Cook responded that it’s a “multi-year, non-exclusive deal.” Keep that in your back pocket, as Sprint also runs a CDMA network.

Check Verizon’s iPhone 4 frequently asked questions page for more.

More on Time.com:

Consumer Electronics Show: 11 Tech Trends for 2011

See the ALL-TIME 100 gadgets list

10 Mac Store Apps To Get You Started

 

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