Is the Verizon iPhone worth buying right now?

The Verizon (VZ) iPhone will officially be available to consumers on February 10. Here’s why it may (or may not) be worth buying right now.

There were not too many surprises during today’s big press keynote in New York today. We figured the announcement would be a CDMA-enabled iPhone 4 and that most everything else would be the same between the current AT&T (T) versions and the new Verizon version.

For the most part, that’s true -- pricing, for example, remains at $199 for a 16GB iPhone, $299 for a 32GB one, with a two-year contract, which existing Verizon customers can preorder starting Feb. 3.

Click Here! Create Your iPhone App! No Programming Required.

There are some changes, however.

A new iPhone coming soon...

We also fully expect a new iPhone this summer, which will probably be carrier-neutral (Verizon’s multi-year contract with Apple isn’t exclusive, and clearly any remaining exclusivity with AT&T is out the window) or at least work with both Verizon and AT&T. It’s also very possible, and probably likely, that the iPhone 5 will feature 4G LTE, since both AT&T and Verizon are pushing so hard in that direction.

And despite Verizon’s reassurances, we’ve yet to see how its network handles the iPhone, and how the iPhone handles the network. All those dropped calls you hear about on AT&T’s iPhone aren’t necessarily just going to disappear with Verizon: it’s possible it’s not (totally) AT&T’s network’s fault, but actually a fault with the “not great at being a phone” iPhone.

Click Here! Create Your iPhone App! No Programming Required.