Breaking: Verizon holding event Jan 11, iPhone on the way?

By Adriana Lee January 7, 2011 5:02 pm EST Comments

Cellular’s worst-kept secret may finally be coming out of the closet:Â Verizon has announced a press event in New York City for Tuesday, 1/11 at 11 AM EST. The topic? It’s under wraps, but it’s widely expected to be the long-awaited Verizon iPhone.

The carrier has already issued a ton of news and device debuts at CES, which leaves one to wonder â€” if this isn’t about the ViPhone, what else could it possibly be?Â I mean, sure, there’s an outside chance that this has nothing to do with any sort of iDevice. But the PR team at Big Red couldn’t be that dumb, could they? After all the hype and anticipation, with eyes focused on this timeframe, an announcement of any other sort would surely upset a ton of people and diminish any other piece of news they might have going.

In the past, Verizon has been known to occasionally include teasers in their press invitations, but this one holds no inkling. Not a word or graphic about the spotlight topic or whether a super special guest speaker â€” like say, one Mr. Steven Jobs â€” will be on hand. (Then again, you wouldn’t really expect it to, would you? Talk about a monumentally epic tip-off.) No, they’re understandably keeping this one close to the vest.

Earlier today, BGR cited an anonymous source stating that Apple employee vacations are banned from February 3â€“6, while numerous pundits have been weighing in for months, throwing their predictions behind an early Q1 announcement/debut of the mythical, but hopefully soon-to-be-real Verizon iPhone.

So at long last, could this really be the day?Â Only time will tell, but thankfully, there won’t be much longer to wait.

ADDITION1: Meanwhile, inside the carrier, it appears they’ve mandated face-to-face training for some sort of “iconic pre-order” scheduled for January 25 to February 4. There are some theories that this is for the Thunderbolt Android device, but then why would Big Red blackout the month of February? That’s not their usual M.O.

Again, all this is speculation until official announcements are made, but the circumstantial evidence seems to be mounting.

ADDITION2: iSmashphone listed out some more circumstantial evidence that will either utterly convince you that this press event is for the ViPhone, or at least give you an entertaining read. It notes that MG Siegler, well-known resident Apple fanboy at TechCrunch, got a specific, non-transerable media invitation to the event. Kind of odd, considering Verizon’s never directly invited him to any of their press conferences before.

Meanwhile there’s Gizmodo, which claims to have a terrific relationship with Verizon, but infamously not with Apple (remember that iffy little thing with the iPhone 4 prototype? Yeah, Apple holds grudges). Well, Gizmodo was totally snubbed for this event. They’re currently trying to get a hold of Verizon.

Daniel

well, its nice, but at&t will be 110% better with less people on their network. distributing iphones on every carrier would not only boost sales for apple, but even out network overloads. im currently an iphone 4 owner, and maybe this summer i'll consider cancelling my contract and switching.

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Kevin

Keith what are you talking about? Verizon has never disabled anything on an Android device. Stop talking pre 2008. Old argument that simply isnt true anymore. And, VZW does not charge 10 dollars for those spam texts. That is an outright lie.

kcee

I think that vzw is changing there prices on there plans . But if they nickel and dime me .I'm switching to att.

Keith

That is exactly why I'm in no hurry to leave AT&T. Verizon does nickel and dime you to death. They charge $10 for those spam text messages that claim you can get a $100 Wal-Mart gift card (or whatever) and call them "premium messages". I get those quite frequently, but have never been charged by AT&T. They also disable features that come with the phone, and then charge a fee for you to be able to use them. Verizon needs to change their dirty ways before I will consider switching.

TS75

Well, whatever it is, let's assume it is for verizon iPhone 4 on 3g network. I am not even excited particularly for following reasons: 1) It's a 3G device. There is no way Apple will give Verizon the podium to declare the first iPhone 4 on 4G network and that too on a Verizon event particularly. 2) Sprint is way ahead in 4G network. LTE phones seems to be slowly coming in summer timeframe. Not every city will get LTE by end of the 2011. It all depends how Verizon act fast on that. There is lot of work need to be done. Firstly, advent of iPhone will add more usage on their 3G network and I am sure their first priority would be to maintain stability of their 3G network because of heavy data usage. They don't want to make same mistakes which AT&T did! 3) Verizon has changed their device policy aggressively. 14 days return period from 30 days, 2 year upgrade policy. These totally sucks. 4) iPhone is not that big of a deal device now for what it used to be 3 years back. Why would I get iphone 4 on 3G network now when I can have dual core Tegra 2 Android devices on the same network coming later this year. Or wait until July 2011 and get new iPhone on their LTE network! 5) With aggressive verizon device policies, I think, the best time to buy iPhone would be between July-December timeframe of the year. Let's say if you buy a new iPhone 4 in Febraury 2011 and lock yourself to 2 years upgrade policy, then July 2011, you will feel bad that you can't buy the latest new iPhone which could be on LTE network, better hardware. Then come July 2012 you will feel more bad that you can't even buy the next new iPhone. You have to wait for 8 months till February 2013 to get hands on the new device which has been released in July 2012 already. And then the same cycle continues! And on top of that you will not be taking LTE fast internet advantages for next two years until 2013. I think you will be missing a lot here. 6) Many people in AT&T have locked themselve to iPhone 4 for next 2 years already. I don't think there will be any massive exodus from AT&T or Sprint to verizon. Yes, people who want iPhone on verizon will move but I don't anticipate, that people will go willy nilly to jump to verizon!

Arturo

Can*

You cam FaceTime over 3G anywhere using the skype app for the iPhone or using another app called tango. Without any jailbreak. So cmon guys stop trying to settle for less on Andriod.

James

I'm on att and I can face time anywhere I want with android phones and iPhone 4

Chris

Facetime anywhere is available with jailbroken devices. I've heard it's a little messy, but with my experiences, and where I live, I don't really see much of a difference between WiFi Facetime and 3G Facetime.

Josecal97

I also friggin want FaceTime anywhere

Parker Crain

Now that I over looked the ces verizon conference the CEO did say that this is "an important week or so" Maybe there will be an iPhone at this next conference.

I hope it's an iPhone! But if it doesn't have 4g, FaceTime anywhere then I will get the thunderbolt

Gilberto Aponte

You can jailbreak it, believe me it is an experience you will not regret, you learn a lot and enjoy the iPhone even more, and can have FaceTime anywhere