After yesterday's Verizon iPhone announcement, Apple's Senior Vice President Phil Schiller has weighed in on what it was like building the Verizon iPhone. The two companies began talks to build a CDMA variant for Verizon's network over 2 years ago in 2008. Over 1,000 test models later, we've officially got a Verizon variant.
Schiller says the task was anything but easy. Apple knows their own hardware but sometimes getting software and hardware to work together isn't an easy goal to accomplish.
“A big part of it is the software, I’d say the biggest part,” ... “It uses the hardware in different ways.”
Verizon is releasing the same model of the iPhone 4 AT&T released back in June. The main difference is that the radio is built for CDMA technology instead of GSM. The Verizon variant also has a mobile hotspot service built-in which will theoretically allow users to tether their iPads to their iPhone. A much easier (and cheaper route) than using services such as Verizon Mifi. Mobile Hotspot is coming to other carriers as well via a firmware update.
[(http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/20110111/apples-phil-schiller-on-building-the-verizon-iphone/)]
