Did you feel bad for not ordering your Verizon iPhone last week when you had the chance? Or, maybe you’re not a Verizon customer and had no choice but to wait? Well, don’t worry because either way your problems are now over — at least where a new iPhone is concerned.

That’s right, as of this morning anyone can go to Verizon or Apple’s websites and pre-order a brand new iPhone. When you do you can elect to go to a store tomorrow and pick up your device in person or, if you don’t mind waiting just a bit longer, have it delivered to your home or office via Fedex.

As someone who’s had the Verizon iPhone for a few days now I can safely say that it’s a great device. If you’ve been on the fence or waiting for this day to come now is your opportunity to get the smartphone you’ve always wanted. What are you waiting for?

I know, reading that headline you may be skeptical because you haven’t received your iPhone 4 notification of shipment yet from Big Red. However, as I got mine last Friday night, I can assure you that Verizon is indeed sending out the iPhone 4 a little earlier than they originally let on. Actually, several days early.

In fact, the news for those of us who stayed awake until midnight West Coast time to order is even better than that. According to an update at Fedex, my particular iPhone 4 is actually on a truck and out for delivery today. See, miracles do happen.

Of course I realize that the iPhone from Verizon is exactly like the iPhone from AT&T and isn’t exactly revolutionary, more like evolutionary. Also, I realize it will actually have some subtle, but potentially problematic, differences from the AT&T version. However, that doesn’t stop me from being pretty excited about the prospect of the best smartphone on the best wireless network.

So, once it arrives in my hands expect a full report and maybe even one or two unboxing photos. In the meantime, if you’ve ordered yours via the Verizon pre-order, don’t lose hope. Your shiny new goodness is probably on the way very soon too.

Given that many people are unhappy with AT&T, but love the iPhone, it’s not surprising that once the iPhone came to Verizon Wireless, it would be a success. With pre-orders for existing Verizon customers taking place yesterday and stopping after only about 24 hours due to being sold out, it’s not surprise that Verizon today has announced record sales figures for the device.

According to the company, sales of the iPhone were bigger than any first-day phone launch for them ever. In addition, the company announced these unprecedented sales happened during the first two hours the iPhone was available, which was between the hours of 3 and 5 AM.

Impressive but also pretty understandable. There’s been pent up demand for the iPhone with millions of customers already on Verizon looking to have the device. We can probably expect those numbers to climb even higher once the iPhone is available to all (including AT&T switchers) on February 10th.

Check out the full press release from Verizon after the jump. Did you get your iPhone yesterday?

Continue Reading →

If you use a Mac and have wished to take advantage of the new hotness from Verizon Wireless (aka the LTE/4G USB Modem) you were out of luck. That is, until now.

This week Verizon Wireless updated its “VZAccess Manager” software to add Mac support for the Pantech UML290 LTE modem. The new update, known by its short and not very sexy name VZAccess Manager version 7.2.4 (2534b), adds support for Apple computers running OS X 10.4 and later.

In case you’re not familiar, Pantech’s UML290 is a USB dongle that allows laptops to connect to Verizon’s 4G LTE network. Until now, the broadband modem could only be connected to Windows-based computers, which doesn’t really seem fair now does it?

The new software is available immediately from Verizon’s website as a free download. Go get it and let us know how it works for you.

One of the most important things when you own and use a smartphone is the data plan. Sure, having the phone to make calls is great (that is when you can make calls. I’m looking at you AT&T) but the real purpose of all that cool phone goodness is to do other things like check email, post on Facebook and Twitter and surf the web while in line at Trader Joe’s.

When the iPhone first hit AT&T, the company offered an unlimited data plan for it. That plan has changed over the years and now features tiered pricing with the word “unlimited” left for the level of frustration many users feel when trying to make a call or, in some cases, send a simple text message.

Fortunately it seems Verizon understands the data needs of smartphone users and will offer a $30 unlimited data plan for the iPhone 4. This was confirmed to The Wall Street Journal by the company’s CEO Lowell McAdam who also said that offering the iPhone with a capped data plan would create an unnecessary barrier for customers looking to switch from AT&T.

“I’m not going to shoot myself in the foot,” he said. Smart man. Verizon will launch the iPhone on February 10th. Will you be getting one?

It’s no secret people have been waiting patiently (well, somewhat patiently) for Verizon to finally get the iPhone on its network. That time has now arrived and the phone is set to launch early next month.

With new product launches as important as this comes new ways to promote said launches. With that in mind, Verizon has releases its first commercial touting the big event.

We, of course, have that new commercial for you right here. It’s pretty good, actually, and helps feed the excitement that probably doesn’t really need to be fed. Everyone’s already about ready to explode. Or maybe that’s just us around here?

Anyway, check out the new commercial after the break. The Verizon iPhone hits stores on February 10th.

Continue Reading →

After some time off for various reasons the team is back together for an all new episode of The Flickcast. On this week’s show, Chris and Matt talk about a whole slew of new and recurring topics.

Some of those topics include their “Best Of” from 2010, some of their favorite things from the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the Verizon iPhone and what the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas really smells like. They also made some new picks this week including Matt’s pick of the indie comedy Barry Munday and Chris’ pick of the new NBC series The Cape.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook or via email.

Podcast: Download

With all the hype over the recent announcement that the iPhone is coming to Verizon, it’s nice to see at least one show offering a sober and reasoned commentary on the event. That show is, of course, The Daily Show with John Stewart. In a seven-minute spot that gets funnier by the minute, Stewart begins with iPhone users’ (including himself) troubles with AT&T.

”For the past three or four years, those of us in the iPhone community have sacrificed one thing for the ability to carry around every photograph we’ve ever taken, or song we’ve ever listened to, or home video, or compass,” Stewart said during the segment. “We have sacrificed the ability to make phone calls.”

It was supposedly so bad for Stewart that he had to send text messages by typing them out on his iPhone 4 and then having an assistant bring the phone to the message’s recipient so they could read it. John Oliver then joins in, reporting live via video chat from yesterday’s Verizon event using his AT&T iPhone. As you might expect, the quality is bad and the video call drops several times.

There’s a lot more in the video that you will enjoy, even if you’re not really caught up in the whole Verizon iPhone thing as many of us are. Funny is still funny.

Check out the video after the jump.

Continue Reading →

Would have gotten this sooner but was at a Starbucks where, curiously, the AT&T provided WiFi was not working. Conspiracy? Mmmmm.

Anyway, on to the important part. During a media event in New York City today, Verizon Wireless announced what many have reported and what has been rumored for months that it will be carrying Apple’s iPhone and that said Verizon iPhone will be available starting February 10th, with pre-orders beginning on the 3rd.

Lowell McAdam, Verizon Wireless’ president and CEO, saying “if the press writes about something for long enough and hard enough, eventually it comes true.”

The iPhone 4 will be pretty much the same as it is with AT&T, with the addition of a “CDMA optimized” antenna and mobile hotspot capabilities. The device will be available at the same price as we had for AT&T as well: $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB

It’s a great day for those of us waiting for the iPhone to hit our favorite wireless network. I’ll be getting one as soon as possible. How about you?

Check out the full press release is after the jump.

Continue Reading →

Yesterday during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Verizon unveiled a bunch of upcoming devices built for its 4G LTE network. Some of the devices include smartphones, tablets, laptop computers and mobile hotspots. Here’s a quick rundown of each 4G device covered during the announcement, compiled by the folks at BGR:

• HTC ThunderBolt – HTC Sense 2.0, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 4.3-inch WVGA display, 8-megapixel camera with HD video recording, DLNA capability, video chat support

• LG Revolution – 4.3-inch touchscreen, Android 2.2, video chat, mobile hotspot support (up to eight devices)

• DROID Bionic 4G – Android, video chat, rear-facing 8-megapixel camera, 4.3-inch display, HDMI connectivity, dual-core 1GHz processor, 512 DDR2 RAM

• Unnamed Samsung Smartphone – Android 2.2, 4.3-inch Super-AMOLED Plus display, 1GHz processor, rear-facing 8-megapixel camera with LED flash, video chat

• Motorola XOOM tablet – 10.1-inch display, Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS, 1080p HD video, front-facing 2-megapixel camera for video chat, 5-megapixel camera with video capture, mobile hotspot capability (up to five devices)

• 4G LTE-enabled Samsung Galaxy Tab – 7-inch TFT display, Android 2.2, 1.2GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird processor, rear-facing 5-megapixel camera, front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera

• Novatel MiFi® 4510L Intelligent Mobile Hotspot – 3G and 4G LTE compatibility

• Samsung 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot – 3G and 4G LTE compatibility

• Compaq CQ10-688nr – 10.1-inch display, Intel Atom N455 processor, up to 8.5 hours of battery life, multi-format digital media card reader, webcam and multiple connectivity options

• HP Pavilion dm1-3010nr – 11.6-inches, HP CoolSense Technology, up to 10.75 hours of battery life, 320 GB of storage, multi-format digital media card reader, HDMI port, Dolby Advanced Audio and GPS for mapping and navigation

Click through to check out the full press release from Verizon. But take note, its pretty massive.

Continue Reading →

As the Consumer Electronics Show kicks off in Las Vegas this week you can expect many announcement over the next four days. Among the first is Motorola’s announcement late yesterday of a new DROID device featuring a dual-core processor, Android OS and designed for the Verizon network.

Dubbed the DROID BIONIC, the handset features a 4.3-inch qHD display, dual-core 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, Wi-Fi, HDMI-out with mirror mode, 1080p playback, 8 megapixel rear-facing camera, front-facing VGA camera, and an LTE radio. With LTE being the forefront of Verizon’s wireless push these days we can expect more announcements like this.

Heck, maybe we’ll finally get that Verizon LTE iPhone we’ve been dreaming of? Could happen. Won’t hold my breath though.

The device will be available “early” in the second quarter of this year. Click through for the full release from Moto.

Continue Reading →

I don’t know about you but I never get tired of Verizon iPhone rumors. Maybe because I wish for it to happen almost more than anything. Don’t get me wrong, I do like my Android powered HTC Incredible. I just miss the iPhone but I won’t go back to it as long as it’s only on AT&T’s network.

So, if I could have something that combines the amazingness of the iPhone with the awesomeness of the Verizon network, I would be a happy person and could then go about my life in blissful contentment . . . until then next version comes out of course.

The rumor this week is about Apple’s search for engineers to work on some new projects. The info, dug up by the gang at Fortune, is about a job for a full-time Cellular Systems Performance Engineers who will deal with protocol issues and field test hardware. They are also looking for people with experience in GSM, GPRS, EDGE, and more to the point, CDMA technologies.

In case you don’t know that last one, CDMA, is the kind of network Verizon uses. That bit of info is made all the more significant by the fact that no currently shipping hardware from Apple — including the iPhone 4 — uses that technology. So, just another piece of the puzzle that when finished will hopefully reveal a shiny new iPhone for Verizon users.

I’d wait in line for that if. . . and I bet some of you would too.

On Monday we brought you news of a report from Consumer Reports that according to the publications’ readers AT&T is the worst mobile carrier in the U.S. That wasn’t a surprise to us and neither is AT&T already fighting back and trying to downplay the report with a report of its own.

Late yesterday, AT&T released information that according to the Better Business Bureau (BBB), its network is the best in the country — 0r, at least, its subscribers complain the least. Verizon Wireless had 34% more complaints, Sprint had 115% more complaints and T-Mobile had 207% more complaints.

AT&T also says it has an A+ average rating nationally from the BBB, having received 107 A+ ratings, seven A ratings and one A- rating from local BBBs across the country. Our opinion? Sounds like AT&T is grasping at straws here.

What do you guys think? Let us know in the comments and check out the full press release from AT&T after the jump.

Continue Reading →

Coming as no surprise to the millions of iPhone users whose calls just got dropped, Consumer Reports announced today that AT&T is the lowest-scoring cell-phone carrier in the U.S., according to a satisfaction survey of 58,000 ConsumerReports.org readers.

Of all of the carriers reviewed in the survey, only AT&T suffered a statistically meaningful drop in satisfaction among its customers over the past year. Surprisingly, at least to me, was the fact that U.S. Cellular beat out every major provider, including Verizon Wireless.

The survey covered a total of nine categories, asking respondents to rate their carrier on overall value, voice and data service, phone support, staff knowledge, and resolution of issues, among others. AT&T scored an overall 60 out of a possible 100 points across the various categories; a full 9 points below the nearest competitor, T-Mobile.

Sprint also made an amazing turnaround this year, leaping ahead of T-Mobile and virtually tying Verizon. Consumer Reports claims that Sprint even scored better than Verizon in some aspects of customer service.

Continue Reading →

It’s a glorious day Apple fans as Verizon is now selling your favorite touch computing device the iPad. It can now be purchased online or in stores so if you’re getting ready for the full transition away from AT&T, this is a great place to start.

You may notice the pricing of the device is the same for both Verizon Wireless and AT&T (16GB: $629, 32GB: $729, 64GB: $829) despite the fact that AT&T sells the iPad Wi-Fi + 3G and Verizon Wireless is only selling the iPad with Wi-Fi. How can this be?

Well, it’s because Verizon is bundling a MiFi 2200 with each iPad. However, in a bid to stay competitive with AT&T, Verizon will not require a contract. Instead, the carrier is offering month-to-month data packages of 1GB for $20, 3GB for $35 or 5GB for $50. AT&T’s data packages for the iPad remain unchanged at $15 for 250MB/Month, $25 for 2GB/Month, or $30 for unlimited if you were one of the lucky ones to have had the deal prior to the change.

As someone who already has an iPad, this won’t really have much effect on me. However, it does bode very well for the future as Apple and Verizon solidify their relationship in time for the company to begin selling the iPhone next year.