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Verizon Deal May Expose iPhone Flaws

Jan 17, 2011  •  Post A Comment

Because Apple walks on water in the minds of many consumers, some flaws in the iPhone have been blamed on the company a number of consumers love to hate, AT&T, says Joe Nocera in The New York Times.

Nocera writes that one thing that may happen when Verizon starts selling the iPhone is that "the Verizon Wireless network will hold up fine but the iPhone will keep dropping calls because of its own inherent compromises. This time, though, it will be much harder to blame all the problems on its wireless carrier, the way it could with the hapless AT&T. At the very least, the iPhone will have to compete with all the Android phones, which offer a sturdier, if less dazzling, experience. And Verizon Wireless is unlikely to abandon its marketing support for Android the way it did with Palm. Those phones have become too important to its bottom line. "

4 Comments

  1. This article is really puzzling. It seems based on pure negative speculation without any facts to back it up.
    Yes, it’s commonly believed that Verizon’s more reliable network will provide solid iPhone voice service where AT&T cannot. It’s hard to believe that flaws in the iPhone software contribute significantly to dropped calls. If that were true, poor beleaguered AT&T would surely have mentioned it by now.
    The Verizon iPhone’s lack of 4G is a non-issue as that service will be largely unavailable until well into 2012.
    Personally I wish the iPhone were thicker and packed a bigger, changeable battery. But there’s no denying that the iPhone interface reinvented the smartphone category, attracting millions of customers to a formerly limited market for Blackberries.
    Of course we’ll know very soon whether this article is factual or silly when the Verizon iPhone actually debuts on Feb 10.

  2. Well it seems (anecdotally) that the biggest subset of iPhone users afflicted with poor voice service are concentrated in a few large markets (NY and San Francisco chief among them) where AT&T has a problem with coverage, backhaul, or perhaps both. I think users in those markets will be glad to have an alternative. In many other locations, though, users will likely stay with AT&T as there is no real difference between the handsets and they would have to sacrifice simultaneous voice and data to get the “better” coverage promised by Verizon.
    My AT&T experience has been very good for the past several years, but then again I wouldn’t be caught dead with an iPhone either, so what do I know?
    Side note: How come my comments have a nice (and helpful) spell-check when apparently the posts themselves do not?

  3. You have a typo in line one: “smoe”. Thanks and have a good day.

  4. http://www.bloomberg.com/video/66408620
    This review of the Verizon version of the iPhone by Bloomberg’s Rich Jaroslovsky — along with other similar reviews by David Pogue and Walt Mossberg — make mincemeat of Joe Nocera’s dubious prediction that the Verizon iPhone “will keep dropping calls because of its own inherent compromises.”

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