"It's an iPhone. There's so much hype about it," she said. "You just have to get it."  In San Francisco, there were no shoppers lined up early Thursday at an Apple store downtown, and only a small line at a nearby Verizon store.  By contrast, thousands have lined up for the release of previous Apple products, including the initial launch of the iPhone 4 in June. In the past, many shoppers have even slept outside all night to ensure being among the first to get a new Apple gadget.  The Verizon iPhone's hardware is similar to the existing iPhone -- the big difference being that it works on Verizon's network instead of AT&T, which has had exclusive rights as the iPhone's wireless carrier since 2007.  The new iPhone went on sale at 7 a.m. Thursday at Verizon and Apple stores, at Best Buy and on the retailer's websites. With a two-year contract, it retails for $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model.  Customers were able to pre-order the Verizon iPhone last week, and analysts estimate between 250,000 and 1 million of the phones were sold on pre-order, making it among the biggest phone debuts on the Verizon network.  Pre-orders for the phone sold out within a day, according to Mashable. The phone became available again available for internet purchase Wednesday.  Customers have been calling for Apple to offer the iPhone on networks other than AT&T for years, in part because that network is known for dropped calls.  Consumer Reports surveys consistently rank AT&T below competitors in terms of customer satisfaction. Larger cities, such as New York and San Francisco, have experienced particular problems with dropped calls and a lack of mobile broadband service on AT&T, to a certain degree because so many data-heavy iPhone users contributed to jamming the network.
After years of anticipation, relatively few people waited in line Thursday morning to buy the new Verizon Wireless iPhone 4, according to anecdotal reports.Fifteen minutes before the phone went on