Verizon’s Apple iPhone 4 – Is It Good For You?

Verizon’s Apple iPhone 4 has been awaited for a long time in the United States as other network providers cannot seem to give consumers the kind of reliable connectivity they expect. Verizon, with its network which is rated as the most reliable in the US and which is certainly the biggest, has come up with the iPhone eager consumers have been waiting for. Before you buy this device, you should be aware that this is not an Apple 4G iPhone, but the Verizon 3G (EV-DO) phone which does not come with GSM roaming. It is a Verizon iPhone with a new antenna design to accommodate the configuration needed by Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). This phone has a CDMA radio inside it.

Although many customers are likely to flock to Verizon with the launch of the iPhone 4 the connectivity is not expected to be affected as the network is well able to cope with the influx of new subscribers. You can expect to have longer calls than you can sustain with other providers and the calls are usually perfectly connected, although there might be problems in a few areas where the signal is weak with some interference to be expected. If you are in such an area, then it is possible that some calls might be dropped. This happens more rarely than with other providers it must be said.

With the Verizon Apple iPhone 4 you can send and receive text messages while on the phone and with the Verizon network you can add up to two people to a call, but then everyone else will be shunted to voice mail.

When you are on the Internet, the connection will stop when you receive an incoming call as these are given priority. The Internet connection can only be resumed when the call has ended and this is a drawback for some users. Another downside to the Verizon Apple iPhone 4 is that although there is international roaming it is limited to forty countries, so depending on your needs that may not be enough. If you need more capacity for roaming, Backup-Verizon will provide you with a GSM device so that you have connectivity while abroad.

Reviewers have reported that data download using the Verizon Apple iPhone 4 is slow as is upload time using the Verizon network. They have also questioned the amount of time you get when the iPhone is fully charged, as it seems to be a lot less than the 24 hours claimed.

You can expect to pay around $90 a month to subscribe to Verizon’s package and have it completely functional. You pay $29.99 per month for unlimited data as you do for Verizon’s other mobile devices, and then you can have optional 2GB tethering data for $20 a month. There’s also the nationwide voice plan which you need to have and the cheapest with unlimited texting is $59 per month.