Well, the article has been killed, however it would make very little sense, given that Apple is not about to start putting Qualcomm CDMA chipsets in their phones. They are far more likely to use their recently-acquired chipmaking expertise to consolidate their chipsets into one or more custom processors, which would offer great savings in power consumption and allow for even smaller, thinner iPhones.
The future of the iPhone is more specialized, not less. Going the CDMA route is expensive, time-consuming, and requires living in Qualcomm-land. Not likely.
I haven't even gone into the politics that separates Apple executives from those at Verizon, but that's an entirely separate matter...
This would be great if it came true. I have an iPhone and a VZW phone. I travel frequently for work, and VZW's coverage trumps ATTs in most places (or at least in the places I seem to go).
I've been using my iPhone mostly for email/data and the VZW phone for my actual voice calls. I would love to dump ATT and just port my Verizon number to a VZW-enabled iPhone.
Oh thank god, I hate dealing with AT&T. In the ridiculously incompetent universe of cell phone providers, Verizon has been my least horrible experience.
I've always been curious to see why people dislike AT&T and would prefer Verizon. I've switched from Cingular to Sprint to T-Mobile to Verizon and now back to AT&T and by far my worst experience has been with Verizon.
A big part of the problem was likely with the handset I had, but the Verizon customer service department was by far the most frustrating of the group that I had to deal with. I cancelled my contract with them after only 3 months after spending over 20 hours on the phone with idiot after idiot during the last month. I got so fed up with them that I walked into the nearest AT&T store, bought a new Blackberry and threw away my Verizon phone (the other lesson I learned from this incident was to never, ever use a Windows operating system on my phone).
In my experience T-Mobile had the best customer service, but they had a weak signal out in the suburbs of Chicago (in the city though T-Mobile had the best coverage by far, working deep underground in parking garages and elevators where pretty much nobody but me would have signal). AT&T has also been great, although come to think of it I don't think I've ever had to call them in the last 2.5 years so I'm not sure if their customer service is still alright.
I would really like to know some of the reasons people prefer Verizon over AT&T.
In some areas, AT&T's network coverage is a joke. Right now I'm in my apartment a block away from Hollywood Blvd in Los Angeles, facing a window, and I can barely hold a signal.
Isn't it a sad state of affairs that the highest praise a cell service can deserve is being the "least horrible experience." But I am right with you.
Naive little me: I had been hoping that AT&T's exclusive with iPhone would bring some pressure to bear on AT&T (or at least some cash flow) to enable their service/coverage to move up a tier. Sadly, I've yet to hear any evidence of my fantastical hope.
The future of the iPhone is more specialized, not less. Going the CDMA route is expensive, time-consuming, and requires living in Qualcomm-land. Not likely.
I haven't even gone into the politics that separates Apple executives from those at Verizon, but that's an entirely separate matter...