Verizon iPhone 4: Thoroughly Reviewed
by Brian Klug on February 13, 2011 9:32 AM ESTSimultaneous Calls, Texts, Data
So if you've heard anything about the Verizon iPhone 4 versus the AT&T iPhone 4, you've heard about simultaneous voice and data. Truth is that on UMTS voice and data are multiplexed, and you can do them at the same time. On 1xEVDO you can either transact voice, or data, but not both at the same time. If you try to do it on the Verizon iPhone 4, you get a screen like this:
It isn't really just voice that interrupts data, however. Text messaging (SMS) does it as well. If you're surfing along and an SMS comes in, data pauses for about three or so seconds while the phone goes down to 1x, gets the SMS, then reacquires EVDO. A lot of people don't know that SMS is still over voice on the CDMA camp. If you're doing lots of texting and surfing at the same time, this can get annoying fast. If you're being bombarded with lots and lots of SMSes, you can't transact any data until all of them are done showing up. You can see behavior for yourself in our overview video as well.
There's also another set of nuances between the CDMA iPhone 4 and UMTS iPhone 4. Conference call features are different, and there are a lot of small things. Whereas the UMTS iPhone 4 can support up to five simultaneous lines, the CDMA version only supports two.
There were also toggles for call forwarding, call waiting, and caller ID toggles on the UMTS version. These are notably absent on the CDMA version, instead you'll need to enter appropriate * codes for those (*72 and *73 for forwarding, *70 for call waiting, *67 for caller ID). That's not an Apple thing but rather a network limitation.
An even larger (but oft overlooked) difference are the SMS differences between the CDMA carriers and UMTS. The CDMA SMS specification has no support for messages with characters outside of ASCII. Send or receive one with "Emoji" or other non-ASCII characters from a CDMA iPhone 4, and you'll get no alert, it just disappears.
One of the huge selling points of GSM for me personally has been long SMS support. If you routinely send texts that are over 160 characters, UMTS/GSM generally wins because most carriers implement long SMS support properly. Verizon had had its own message concatenation back in the day, but I've yet to see it really used on a smartphone of theirs. It was one of the first things I tested against a friend of mine who also has a Verizon iPhone 4. Turns out that between Verizon customers, SMS concatenation does work, and long multi-texts are combined into one. That's hugely awesome if you SMS as much as I do.
However, concatenation doesn't always work between carriers. That's not a carrier specific thing, but just crappy SMS interchanges between carriers being a problem.
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hsew - Sunday, February 13, 2011 - link
lolnoobs and LOLphone?I lol'd at the speed tests. Makes me wish I bought an iPad when the data was still unlimited.
guest123 - Sunday, February 13, 2011 - link
First off, thanks for the typically thorough review, Brian.I wonder, though, about your conclusion that the Verizon iPhone is "significantly less prone to unintended signal attenuation." True, in the "cupping tightly" scenario the Verizon iPhone is now in line with other leading smartphones, and in the "holding naturally" scenario it improves on the performance of the At&T model. But the Verizon iPhone is still significantly more prone to attenuation in the "holding naturally" scenario than any of the phones you've listed. To me, this was always the real point of the attennagate controversy: as your chart shows, the At&T iPhone is more prone to attenuation when held naturally than other phones are when held in a death grip. Based on your results, the Verizon version has improved, but only to the extent that it attenuates about as badly when held naturally as other phones do when death-gripped. That still seems like a non-trivial problem.
jmcb - Monday, February 14, 2011 - link
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that.....jmcb - Monday, February 14, 2011 - link
Noticed that when held naturally its still worse than any other phone on the list....7Enigma - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 - link
I agree with you as well. I did not like the wording in this section as 99% of people using a PHONE are going to hold it like a PHONE. So while the other numbers are nice to have for specific usage scenarios, the one that is the most important, while improved, is still significantly worse than anything else (other than the AT&T iPhone).mike55 - Sunday, February 13, 2011 - link
I've noticed that the AT&T iPhone 4's have varying degrees of warmer screens than the relatively cooler screen on the AT&T unit you mentioned in this review. I would be interested in seeing how the different screens compare in terms of black level, maximum brightness, color accuracy, etc.Maybe you guys could get a bunch of units and compare them. It would be interesting to see how other smartphones fare in terms of display panel variance from unit to unit. I'm sure all of the display nerds like myself would appreciate such an article. :D
cgalyon - Sunday, February 13, 2011 - link
How does this review not say, "it's the iPhone 4, on Verizon. The radio is different, the rest is the same."?7Enigma - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 - link
If that's what you think why click on the review? And why comment?Voldenuit - Sunday, February 13, 2011 - link
Well, obviously the EU regulatory iconography (CE, CE compliance identifier, CE Alert icon) didn't need to exist anymore since a CDMA phone is pretty useless in Europe.I'm surprised that the FCC label also vanished, though.
LTG - Monday, February 14, 2011 - link
1) Great facts - You somehow took a topic I thought would be a snoozer and extracted quite a bit of interesting detail i hadn't read before.2) Great prose - The general approach, style, and constant attention to what readers are thinking. Feels like we're discovering it all with you.
3) Technical writing mistakes - i didnt notice any! I know it sounds like a really lame point. But it actually is a nice benefit to not be jarred out concentration by typos or grammar mistakes. Its like a luxury on the Internet and makes the experience so smooth.
With all the comments critical of writing here I think its fair to call out the opposite side as well.
Peace -