verizon

Hoping for a blazing fast 4G LTE compatible iPhone 5 to hit shelves later this year? Don't hold your breath. Although competitors to Apple's iPhone are already coming out with LTE phones, analyst Sam Greenholtz from Telecom Pragmatics claims Apple will wait for the iPhone 6 use the technology.

A report in The Street explains that Greenholtz has communicated with sources who say the LTE iPhone 6 is already under development. June or July 2012 is Apple's target launch date, which also gives carriers including AT&T and Verizon more time to roll out their LTE networks to full capacity.

If you're a regular iPhoneFAQ reader, this won't be the first time you've heard us advise you against buying iPhone or other mobile phone insurance through your wireless provider. When AT&T began offering iPhone insurance, we demonstrated how overpriced and undervalued their policy offerings were, hopefully saving many of you a great deal of money and frustration. Since the Verizon iPhone was announced, we've been waiting to find out what Verizon was going to step up to the plate with on the insurance front, hoping we'd be impressed. Unsurprisingly enough, we're not.

Hoping for anything else was sort of pointless given that Verizon and AT&T both offer insurance through the same third party company, Asurion. While the coverage that Asurion offers is excellent, the pricing is anything but. So, even though the same wizard is behind the curtain at both AT&T and Verizon and not ignoring the fact that replacement costs to the consumer are roughly $50 higher with the CDMA iPhone, we were hoping we'd see Verizon pushing aggressive pricing for insurance to give AT&T iPhone owners more reasons to switch.

Though it hasn't yet been announced by Verizon, details of insurance options that will be available to Verizon iPhone owners are now available through Asurion's web site. Asurion is the third-party company that backs the mobile phone insurance Verizon combines with it's extended device warranty and markets to customers as Verizon TEC (Total Equipment Coverage). Although Verizon customers that own smartphones similar in price to the Verizon iPhone insure and protect their devices for $7.99 a month, at $10.99 a month, iPhone owners aren't so lucky.

That is, if you consider $7.99 per month for insurance that comes with high deductibles "lucky" in the first place. From a deductible perspective, things are even worse for Verizon iPhone owners than they are when considering the monthly fee hike. Should you opt for Verizon / Asurion's TEC coverage on your Verizon iPhone, expect to pay a whopping $199 deductible in the event that you do need to file a claim.

Though supplies are limited, existing customers were given the opportunity to reserve a Verizon iPhone starting at 3 AM this morning. This opportunity continues, with Verizon iPhone pre-orders still open and available at this time. If you're not currently a Verizon customer, including AT&T customers wishing to switch to a Verizon iPhone, you'll have to wait until February 9th to pre-order. The Verizon iPhone will be available in full release on February 10th, both nationwide at Verizon and Apple retail stores and online.

If you're hoping to get your hands on the Verizon iPhone, we strongly recommend pre-ordering. You'll avoid long lines on release day as well as avoiding the possibility that the iPhone will sell out before you can get one. If you're an existing Verizon customer, and would like to pre-order the Verizon iPhone, here's how to get it done:

UPDATE (2/14/2011): A jailbreak (not unlock) for Verizon iPhones running iOS 4.2.6 is now available. Click the following link to learn about how to jailbreak the Verizon iPhone.

Since Verizon's iPhone 4 launch announcement yesterday, the web has been rife with speculation on how soon we'll see the Verizon iPhone 4 jailbroken and unlocked. Will the iPhone Dev Team focus on the CDMA iPhone unlock, or just the jailbreak of iOS 4.2.5? If an unlock does become available for the Verizon iPhone, will Sprint embrace the CDMA iPhone? Some say it will happen, some say it won't. Except there's only one problem ... the CDMA / Verizon iPhone 4 isn't locked in the first place. Why? Because CDMA phones aren't locked.