When Verizon's iPhone's available in Feb, people will jump into "real-life" testing. At this moment, I'm guessing there are 3 possible outcomes of the Verizon's iPhone Launch.
The 1st would be what I think most media and people "believe" today – the Verizon iPhone has great reception. The iPhone will finally be a completed smart phone, no longer limped by AT&T's poor coverage that hinges people from switching over from their brands. Perhaps there will be a couple of complaints from individual consumer. But if the general crowd is happy with the new phone, it will be another wave of laughter on AT&T and how miserable it was when iPhone lovers had no choice.
The 2nd scenario would be the opposite of the above, and that is if Verizon fails general public's expectations. You see, expectation floats, and it rises higher and higher as more speculation and gossip charm in. People who are not familiar with the potential shortfalls of the CDMA technology might see things they didn't expect – for example, "simultaneous voice / data over 3G" is expected to be NOT available from Verizon. I believe the Verizon iPhone has better reception/voice quality than the AT&T iPhone, but SOME people may say it's no big deal.
The 3rd one is something a little wild. What if, both AT&T and Verizon's iPhones have issues with reception, with the Verizon iPhone performing slightly better? Going back to the issue of "Antenna Gate" related to the iPhone 4's industrial design, as referred by Steve Jobs himself, it would be a disaster for Apple because people believe Verizon's network quality and technology. I assume Apple would try to fix the signal attenuation issue in the CDMA version of the iPhone, although Apple claims the slight change in the new Verizon iPhone's industrial design was only and specifically for adapting the CDMA technology.
Should I rank the likelihood of above, I'd still arrange them in the same sequence as is. Some insiders might have already tried the new Verizon iPhone (e.g. Apple and Verizon employees). And I'm sure media like WSJ would have already gotten a "pre-briefing" of the performance kick. I would just hope the media is correct and that the Verizon iPhone is the savior of the iPhone lovers. May the 26% existing AT&T customers be happier in their everyday life, thanks to Verizon. For me, I couldn't wait to read posts from Blogs that really runs a suite of RF tests and showcase the differences.
