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Apple to Manufacture Verizon-Compatible iPhone in Q3 2010?

I just want to know why anyone in their right mind would not want a choice of carriers for the iPhone? Competition is good. Just because Apple somehow "blessed" AT&T as some kind of an "Apple" company doesn't mean limiting consumer choice is a good thing. They make cell phone radios that will handle all of the different cellular systems in place today so there is no reason that an iPhone can't be universal.

Google is taking the Microsoft route by allowing different hand-set makers and carries use the Android platform. Apple is taking the Mac route by locking the phone down to AT&T. It will be interesting to see in a year or two how things develop. Will Apple start to feel enough pressure to open the iPhone to more carriers or stay with AT&T only? I'm guessing that the iPhone 4G will be ready way before the AT&T 4G network is. AT&T still has a long way to go to finish their 3G network.
 
I thought the exclusivity agreement was 5 years?

AT&T can kiss my butt. I am still waiting for a carrier to provide more minutes and better coverage for less money. Doesn't Moore's Law apply here?
 
Wow, what an incredibly BAD idea! The screen shrink has got to be one of the dumbest suggestions ever and certainly makes this rumor extremely suspect.

Beyond that, I don't see what the point of going with Verizon would be. For one thing, their network can not support simultaneous data and voice calls, which I am finding is one of the really useful features of the 3G & 3GS, especially for business use. For another, all the crying about bad coverage on AT&T is hugely over blown. AT&T works just fine for me everywhere I go. On the other hand, before I got my iPhone I had been on Verizon since they started as GTE and their coverage in my area had gotten so bad that it was far worse than even the most exaggerated complaints about AT&T have described. And then there is the way Verizon handicaps their phones to force customers into unnecessary and unreasonable fees. Trust me, there is nothing to be gained and a great deal to be lost by switching to Verizon. I was more than happy to leave and haven't regretted it in the slightest.

Honestly, I have to wonder if all the folks whining about AT&T are just a bunch of trolls who work for Verizon and are out spreading FUD on the internet in a desperate effort to protect their jobs.
 
segfaultdotorg said:
I thought the exclusivity agreement was 5 years?

AT&T can kiss my butt. I am still waiting for a carrier to provide more minutes and better coverage for less money. Doesn't Moore's Law apply here?
Click to expand...

Most of the rumors were that the agreement was 2 years, then extended, but no one knows.
 
I have been impatiently waiting for an Iphone to hit Verizon since 90% of my family and people i call are on it.

BUT

2.8" screen, what am i gonna do with that. People complain about the 3.5" screen. I don't want an Iphone Nano.

$350 termination fee is ridiculous but i don't plan on cancelling and selling the phone on ebay.

Android will eventually get more popular than Iphone once developers sense a decent user base and get even more sick of Apples approval process.
 
X38 said:
Honestly, I have to wonder if all the folks whining about AT&T are just a bunch of trolls who work for Verizon and are out spreading FUD on the internet in a desperate effort to protect their jobs.
Click to expand...

I am going to make sure I put on my tin foil hat before I go to work at Verizon tomorrow because Verizon programs their cellular signals to go into my brain and force me to say bad things about AT&T.

Seriously though there are many places where Verizon DOES have a much better network and people just want a choice. A lot of people all over the Internet complain about the AT&T network. If it is all Verizon employees doing that then I have no idea how they run a company. (FYI - I don't really work for Verizon)
 
I love my iPhone 3gs and I get great coverage with AT&T here in the IE.

Having said that, apple needs to open the phone up to as many networks as posssible. And the smaller screen is a terrible idea.
 
aristotle said:
Uh, yeah. It is a bit more complicated than just having the chip. There are other pieces of hardware required as well as a completely different network stack.
Click to expand...

So are you saying that it would be too difficult for Apple to do this? Isn't their other companies offering universal handsets already?
 
blipper said:
I keep seeing this but I have both an iPhone and a Verizon phone and I have traveled around the United States and have very rarely found a place where the ATT coverage wasn't several bars lower than Verizon. Most notable, the Mt. Baker National Wilderness in Washington State. iPhone: no bars in the parking lot at the trailhead at the end of SR 542. Verizon: two bars five miles into the wilderness area. I really would like a list of areas where ATT service is better.
Click to expand...

you will not find said list. This list does not exist. Verizon actually compares there network to competitors and makes sure it is as good or better in a given area. That can you hear me now guy is actually based on a dude that drives around a station wagon full of cell equipment that makes thousands of test calls on both vzw and att network. I remeber reading an interview of one of these google maps like drivers. They criss cross the us testing the network. ATT it just seems does not test it after they put it up. I have plenty of spots i go from bars to no bars to full bars. That little cut over drops the call. This has driven me to the Droid, not like i want to go to a droid i have to work harder to do that very same thing the iphone can do. I mean it is lame that i have to resort to this. I know i will get flammed in my area it just does not work out for the iphone. If some other market in some other life maybe just maybe
 
X38 said:
Wow, what an incredibly BAD idea! The screen shrink has got to be one of the dumbest suggestions ever and certainly makes this rumor extremely suspect.

Beyond that, I don't see what the point of going with Verizon would be. For one thing, their network can not support simultaneous data and voice calls, which I am finding is one of the really useful features of the 3G & 3GS, especially for business use. For another, all the crying about bad coverage on AT&T is hugely over blown. AT&T works just fine for me everywhere I go. On the other hand, before I got my iPhone I had been on Verizon since they started as GTE and their coverage in my area had gotten so bad that it was far worse than even the most exaggerated complaints about AT&T have described. And then there is the way Verizon handicaps their phones to force customers into unnecessary and unreasonable fees. Trust me, there is nothing to be gained and a great deal to be lost by switching to Verizon. I was more than happy to leave and haven't regretted it in the slightest.

Honestly, I have to wonder if all the folks whining about AT&T are just a bunch of trolls who work for Verizon and are out spreading FUD on the internet in a desperate effort to protect their jobs.
Click to expand...

I am not a verizon employee nor a troll. I think ATT in my area is lame. I have suffered under the ATT i have lost calls i have failed call setups quite frequently and this is in a good coverage zone. I go to where they say i will have good edge coverage to be met with the all bars trickle to no bars to searching to boom all bars that is enough to drop my calls. I am sorry but there is a real issue in some market area's and i am in one of them. Yes we are currently on the 850 so not like that switch will help. I think some fanboyism is a little too strong. I love the Iphone But I also love it to work where it should and that is not apple.
 
sziehr said:
I am not a verizon employee nor a troll. I think ATT in my area is lame. I have suffered under the ATT i have lost calls i have failed call setups quite frequently and this is in a good coverage zone. I go to where they say i will have good edge coverage to be met with the all bars trickle to no bars to searching to boom all bars that is enough to drop my calls. I am sorry but there is a real issue in some market area's and i am in one of them. Yes we are currently on the 850 so not like that switch will help. I think some fanboyism is a little too strong. I love the Iphone But I also love it to work where it should and that is not apple.
Click to expand...

I would love to see a Verizon iPhone just not with a tiny screen or a gimped iPhone. Even before the iPhone it's been clear who's had the better network. The best solution has always been for the iPhone to available to as many carriers as possible. It creates competition to lower prices and to force companies to provide better technology and network coverage.

The sad thing is that others like Sasha Seegan have said that AT&T has the ability to make a great network but they screw it up. The worst part may be that it seems that without AT&T's exclusivity they could potentially fall apart. T-Mobile and Sprint are clearly headed in that direction. We could eventually see a Verizon monopoly.
 
BVeritas said:
4. Apps are easily pirated.

Android phones cannot be locked. One of the reasons that Apple fights unlocking is to prevent pirating. If you unlock your iPhone, you cannot purchase apps from the AppStore. Apps on Android have no DRM, so it's relatively easy to pirate them (even if it had DRM, it's not that difficult). So, we know that any app that costs anything will be stolen.

So, in the end the user will get buggy apps. Developers will have their hard work stolen. Users will be stuck with whatever OS release comes with their phone.
Click to expand...

Even more than pirating, I'd be concerned about apps that can be written that allow the app to do something unintended, like having a backdoor to execute malicious code.

Apple's app store protects BOTH the app writer and the phone user.
 
NoExpectations said:
Enjoy your trip back to 2001....where voice and data can not coexist together. (CDMA)
Click to expand...

This is a serious CDMA deficiency - accessing data, apps, MMS, web, etc. while talking is paramount in regard to multi-tasking.

This will be a deal breaker for many.
 
DMann said:
This is a serious CDMA deficiency - accessing data, apps, MMS, web, etc. while talking is paramount in regard to multi-tasking.

This will be a deal breaker for many.
Click to expand...

On my Sprint phone, data "seems" to drop down to 1xRTT during calls. I haven't actually tried browsing while talking on the phone, but I imagine it'd just be slower. Is there actually no data at all while on the phone?

(also, with WiFi, this isn't as big of a deal as it used to be.)
 
sziehr said:
you will not find said list. This list does not exist. Verizon actually compares there network to competitors and makes sure it is as good or better in a given area. That can you hear me now guy is actually based on a dude that drives around a station wagon full of cell equipment that makes thousands of test calls on both vzw and att network. I remeber reading an interview of one of these google maps like drivers. They criss cross the us testing the network. ATT it just seems does not test it after they put it up. I have plenty of spots i go from bars to no bars to full bars. That little cut over drops the call. This has driven me to the Droid, not like i want to go to a droid i have to work harder to do that very same thing the iphone can do. I mean it is lame that i have to resort to this. I know i will get flammed in my area it just does not work out for the iphone. If some other market in some other life maybe just maybe
Click to expand...

Exact same is true in my area. I need a cell phone provider that I can trust to provide a business call connection throughout the duration of a call.

I did visit my Verizon store today and they did not cripple either model of the Droids they offer. I'm carrying a dumb as dirt 5-6 year old Moto flip phone the only cost upcharge will be a $30 per month unlimited digital plan and a $3 per month increase in my handset insurance plan. Multimedia (photos and videos) will cost me 25 cents per transfer.

My base charge is $50/mo for 750 daytime minutes, 300 free texts/mo, and 5 friends and family free unlimited minutes.

I do expect to pay more per app than I would with an iPhone (typically $35 each), and some iPhone apps that can be purchased outright, can only be accessed with Verizon as a $3 to $4 per month charge. That's the "nickle and dime you to death" reputation Verizon has.

If I buy a Moto Droid today, the quickest I could upgrade to a Verizon iPhone (assuming such a thing ever comes to pass) would be July 2012...just in time to go with whatever iPhone would be available on Verizon at that time.
 
segfaultdotorg said:
I am still waiting for a carrier to provide more minutes and better coverage for less money. Doesn't Moore's Law apply here?
Click to expand...

Only Economic Laws apply here.

It requires billions and billions (to quote Carl Sagen) of dollars investments into tower upgrades to handle the 4G load a quicker/better network needs to provide the customer's ever-growing data use will demand. Forecasts say that investment will continue to be made several years out into the future. Until the network of towers can provide more then the usual load a group of users place on it, then it will be counter-productive to lower the use costs. When a carrier has more transmission capacity then the users need, then there may be some attempts to encourage more use with a lower price plan.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

Smaller screen= smaller keyboard :(. UNLESS Apple become a market follower and introduce a physical keyboard :/

I think these Verizon compatible rumors could be intox from Apple. If Verizon think they could exploit the iPhone next year then they may stop mud slinging now...
 
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