The HTC Ozone might just be one of the best deals at Verizon Wireless. Check out everything you get for only $49.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate: QWERTY, Winmo 6.1, global roaming, Wi-Fi, and teathering. I don’t think you could ask for a better value out of a brand new Verizon phone.

Well, isn’t this a kick in the pants? If you’re wearing mine it is. Just last week I had Verizon’s FiOS installed in my new apartment and today they announce new offers for customers and upgraded speeds. In short, I’m pissed. Turns out that I got a better deal and rate when I signed up two weeks ago. Hooray!

Globe trotters-

Starting tomorrow you’ll be able to purchase the Verizon Wireless USB1000 Global Modem (Novatel) for $150 after a $50 MIR with a two-year contract.

Announced on Monday, the Samsung Omnia 2 is making its way onto Verizon very soon and we sat down with it for a little groping session.

After 10 days of waiting for my Verizon FiOS install, I finally have Internet and cable in my new apartment. Goodbye, Time Warner. You put up a good fight by offering free Showtime for a year and knocking a few bucks off the bill, but I don’t care about CallerID on my TV or NY1. RAWR, Verizon FiOS, RAWR. It’s certainly not as fast at Nicholas’s OOLU, but it’s good enough for me. Hit the jump for speeds.

It’s not surprising as we’ve seen these sorts of acts in the past, but Verizon is really pushing it by comparing the Pre to the BlackBerry Storm. I’ve had my Pre for just a few short days and I’m already itching to ditch my Curve and skip on over to Sprint for the Pre. Anyway, hit the jump to check out all the Verizon propaganda.

The BlackBerry Tour 9630 could go down in history as the most leaked cell phone ever. The phone isn’t suppose to hit carriers until mid-July and we already know everything about it after this latest leak. Heck, there have been full reviews done of the upcoming BlackBerry. In case you missed those, or just want a handy-dandy spec list, here ya go.

Great news: The Blackberry Storm is finally usable. Most of our issues with the phone were resolved with the first official Verizon update for the Storm. It’s now a quality phone that’s worthy of the BlackBerry name.

As of Sunday, May 31, the update is available via either directly from the support section of VZW.com or from an OTA download. We downloaded the update over the air yesterday and it took about 2 hours for the 19MB update - the servers were probably running at full capacity. Once it finished downloading and installing, we were instantly pleased.

First it was AT&T mouthing off about carrying the Palm Pre and now Verizon’s CEO Lowell McAdam is stating that VZW will begin selling the Palm Pre “over the next six months or so…” Also mentioned was the Storm 2 by McAdam, which will also go on sale in the same time frame. Side note: Palm shares went up 11 points while Sprint’s went down 3 points after this announcement.

Short version: We’ve loved the MiFi mobile router since we first laid eyes on it back at CES. After a few days of playing with the Verizon MiFi 2200, we still love it just as much - but with one hangup: the nasty monthly bill. After a trivial hiccup with the activation, we had 4 computers up and running in minutes. Speeds in our area are about average for the local EVDO Rev-A network, and we’ve had absolutely no connectivity drops in our 2 days of testing.

I pity the poor rural cellphone owner. First Verizon snapped up Alltel and something called Rural Cellular and now AT&T grabbed those 1.5 million subscribers in a $2.35 billion deal.

Ready for an e-ink cell phone? If so, head down to a VZW store and pick up the Samsung Alias 2 starting today for only $79. The phone sports a keyboard that, through the magic of e-ink, changes to meet the phone’s usage. It displays a standard number keypad when in normal phone mode and a QWERTY keyboard when in texting mode. Amazing. Too bad the phone comes with a horrid classroom-like theme. Another pic after the jump.

May 17th is shaping up to be a big day for Verizon if this rumor is correctly stating the launch date of upcoming netbook. That day is also the launch date of the portable hotspot, MiFi. The HP Mini netbook comes packing integrated 3g wireless for Internet connectivity and will be available for $199 with a two-year data contract. Yeah, it’s a bit pricey.

We’ve had a special place in our hearts for the Novatel Wireless MiFi ever since we played with one at CES. Verizon let it leak via the MiFi’s online manual that the carrier was getting the portable EV-DO router sometime soon, but now we have info to fill in the blanks.

The Verizon MiFi 2020 appears to be all of the hotness that the pre-production Novatel was with ability to share a Verizon 3G connection over 802.11b/g to five WiFi devices simultaneously. The battery should last up to four hours when in active use, and 40 hours in standby mode. You would think that Verizon would charge a hefty premium for such a device, but actually, it’s not that bad.

Good news and bad news, folks. Good news: If you’re anxiously awaiting the debut of the Samsung Alias 2, you may only have another couple of weeks to wait. Bad news: As far as anyone can tell, it’s still sporting that absolutely horrid elementary schoolroom theme.

Game on! Cablevision, a cable company that serves the suburbs of New York City, and whose ISP, OptimumOnline, I use, recently announced that it will offer the fastest broadband in America starting next month. Speeds will top out at 101 megabits per second down, 15 megabits per second up. (That translates to around 12.6 megabytes per second down, 1.8 megabytes per second up. BitTorrent seeding just got a whole lot easier. I mean, what else would you use these speeds for?) But you know who’s not too pleased about this? Verizon, what’s with its competing FiOS service. In fact, Verizon is calling Cablevision’s plan a “parlor trick.” I do believe Verizon is stylin’ on Cablevision.

At the risk of repeating myself for the millionth time, in many peoples’ minds, the Achilles’ heel of the iPhone is the network it’s on in the US: AT&T. Since the day it was announced as being exclusive to that provider, people have been wondering one thing: How long until it’s on Verizon? Rumors have surfaced time and again about the possibility, but today brings perhaps the most concrete news yet that the two sides are talking.

The two sides are discussing the possibility of getting Verizon version of the iPhone ready for 2010, sources tell USA Today. There are likely two reasons it would take until next year. The first, is that Apple’s exclusive contract with AT&T runs through next year. The second is that a Verizon version would presumably have to be CDMA-ready, which means the innards of the iPhone would have to be slightly tweaked, as the current iPhone is GSM-only (which AT&T, and most other cell networks run on).

Praise Jebuz! The next-gen CDMA full keyboard Blackberry seems to be right on track according to a pre-release hands-on by CrackBerry. The model they sent through the paces came out fine, despite not being the final version meant for consumer’s hands. There were, of course, some bugs, but overall, the 9630 seems to be as good as CDMA users can get.