Week Six

AT&T haters have been waiting years for a Verizon iPhone, so where were the 'round-the-block lines on Thursday? Chalk up the relatively muted atmosphere to strong direct-ship preorders, the lack of a truly new version, and the fact that waiting in line outside in February is much different from doing so in June. 

Just after the Verizon iPhone went on pre-order last week, the carrier boasted record-setting numbers of sales . Some estimates pegged the number at half a million units in only a few hours.

When the actual phones made it to stores on Thursday, though, most places didn't see the kind of blocks-long lines that form at Apple and AT&T stores each time a brand-new model rolls out. So was the launch a big downer? Why no dancing in the street? Might be because Verizon's iPhone 4 isn't exactly a new model; might also be because previous launches happened in June, and it is now February. If you don't get the point I'm trying to make, you need to go outside more.
Anyway, now AT&T refuseniks who want an iPhone can get one, and at its heart it is the same iPhone 4 the world has seen before. But there are a few minor differences.
For one thing, the metal band around the Verizon iPhone appears to be subtly different than the one around the AT&T iPhone. That band serves as the device's antenna, and it was sharply criticized when iPhone 4 was first launched. It seems the design resulted in a so-called "death grip" -- hold the phone a certain way and watch your service bars disappear. It would stand to reason that Apple may have wanted to tweak that bit of engineering for the Verizon launch, but a few reports have surfaced that the death grip is still there, and it's now been joined by the "death hug," which affects the thing's WiFi antenna. We'll see if this issue snowballs the way it did last summer.

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