Just as the headline says, Apple’s iPhone 4 won Best Mobile Device of the Year at Mobile World Congress 2011.  What is really interesting, however, is that Apple didn’t even show up at the show in any meaningful way (they never do).

The phone was praised by judges, and according to Apple Insider, the judges said they picked the iPhone 4 because it has a “great screen, sharp design, fantastic materials, and phenomenal ecosystem for app developers. In a tight race, the iPhone 4 builds on the success of its predecessors to set the pace for smartphones.”

Head over to the Global Mobile Awards website to see winners in other categories.

[Via Mashable]

Rod from Simple Mobile Review got his new Verizon iPhone 4 from UPS today and has done an uboxing.  Needless to say, Rod’s frequency of posts here on iPhone Insider is probably about to increase significantly…

Head over to Simple Mobile Review to see Rod’s Verizon iPhone 4 unboxing…

We knew that the Verizon iPhone 4 would be a hot selling device.  We actually thought that it would go on to be the best and fastest selling phone in U.S. history.  What we didn’t know, however, was that pre-orders of the iPhone 4 would go so fast that they would break Verizon’s first day sales record of a single device in just 2 hours.

VERIZON WIRELESS HAS RECORD SALES ON FIRST DAY OF iPHONE 4

Available to General Public on Feb.10

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. – At 8:10 p.m. EST yesterday, Verizon Wireless ceased online orders of iPhone 4 to existing customers and ended the most successful first day sales in the history of the company.

“This was an exciting day,” said Dan Mead, president and chief executive officer for Verizon Wireless. “In just our first two hours, we had already sold more phones than any first day launch in our history. And, when you consider these initial orders were placed between the hours of 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., it is an incredible success story. It is gratifying to know that our customers responded so enthusiastically to this exclusive offer — designed to reward them for their loyalty.

“I am proud of our employees who worked tirelessly to strengthen and scale our systems, enabling unprecedented customer orders through our website. Overall, it was a very good day,” he added.

Mead also said customers will have another opportunity at being among the nation’s first to own an iPhone 4 on the Verizon Wireless network.

“Yesterday’s launch set the pace for next week when we open up sales to everyone across America.”

The general market launch of the iPhone 4 on the Verizon Wireless network will occur on February 10. The company will open its more than 2000 Verizon Wireless Stores at 7 a.m. It will also be available at all Apple store locations, Best Buy, select Wal-Mart stores, and on-line at verizonwireless.com and apple.com.

There is no question that Verizon is going right AT&T in this iPhone 4 commercial bring back the “Can your hear me now?” guy where he says, “Yes, I can hear you now…”

Shortly after 8:00 p.m. this evening (Thursday, Feb. 3rd) both Verizon and Apple stopped taking pre-sale orders for the Verizon iPhone 4.  Pre-sale orders of the Verizon iPhone 4 started this morning at 3:00 a.m. est, however, they were shut down a mere 17 hours later.  We aren’t sure if the plan all along was to shut down pre-sale orders after just one day, but, it doesn’t look like the pre-sales orders are coming back online before Feb. 9th.

As of 3:00 a.m. this morning (Feb 3rd), Verizon customers were able to pre-order the iPhone 4 which will officially go on sale one week from today, Feb. 10th.  You have the option of going ordering your device through the Verizon or Apple websites, but, you must be an existing Verizon customer…

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam confirmed that Verizon will offer a $30 unlimited data plan for the iPhone 4 stating that offering the iPhone with a capped data plan would create an “unnecessary barrier” for customers looking to switch from AT&T.

I’m not going to shoot myself in the foot…  Not offering an unlimited plan would put up a barrier for customers who might otherwise switch from AT&T.

McAdam also stated that the $30 unlimited data plan for the iPhone would be temporary and that Verizon would eventually switch to a tiered data plan similar to AT&T.

If you know that you are going to get an iPhone 4 on Verizon and unlimited data is important to you, I strongly suggest that you pick up your device sooner rather than later.

Apple has released a commercial that features both the AT&T and the Verizon iPhone 4 side by side.  We are going to go out on a limb and assume that AT&T nor Verizon had much to do with this…

If you are like the majority of mobile phone users in North America you buy your devices subsidized, usually paying much less than retail for a device up front in exchange for signing up to a 2 or 3 year service contract. You can pick up the iPhone 4 for $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model on both AT&T and Verizon, however, the Verizon iPhone will cost $50 more when you don’t buy it on contract.

If we had to guess we’d say that the reason for the price difference, the Verizon models costs $649 and $749 respectively for the 16GB and 32GB models compared to $599 and $699 on AT&T, is because the CDMA iPhone actually costs more and Verizon eats the cost difference on the subsidized models to stay competitive.

[Via 9to5mac]

The Verizon iPhone 4 marketing campaign has commenced.  This is the first Verizon iPhone 4 commercial.  The wait is almost over…