I am happy to announce that I have gotten my hands on the year's most eagerly awaited "smartphone," the one that led thousands of consumers to get on waiting lists for its release and then crowded into stores when it went on the market: Verizon Wireless' BlackBerry 8830 World Phone.

Oh, you thought I meant Apple's iPhone, which runs on the AT&T wireless network?

Well, except for a few handpicked writers, Apple and AT&T have declined to make iPhones available for lengthy testing and review. Everyone else got pretty much the same hands-on look in the store that you would. So I cannot tell you much about such nitty-gritty questions as "what kind of signal will you get in Haverhill?" or "will the battery die before or after the two-year contact runs out?"

So let's talk instead about the cell phone marketing business and what it means to consumers.

From my brief testing, the relentless hype seems mostly accurate: the iPhone is an impressive device that probably will define a new market niche: a communications and entertainment center that fits in your pocket. A lot of devices can do some of what an iPhone does, few can do all it does and none integrate the functions so well.

On the other hand, Verizon's 8830 can do some things that the iPhone cannot: connect to Verizon's faster data network, function as a broadband modem for your Notebook, or (thanks to the well-established BlackBerry market for third-party software) add additional programs and functions. To cite just one: Antair Corp. (antair.com) has rolled out a Spam Filter for the BlackBerry. If, like me, you are an individual user and do not route your emails to your handheld via a corporate server, the Antair Spam Filter is pretty much a must. It will keep the junk out of your e-mail; on an iPhone, you'll have to live with it.

But here's one thing that you probably haven't read much in all the iPhone hype: over the course of a two-year service contract you actually will pay less for it than for a BlackBerry on either Verizon or AT&T. (Yeah, that surprised me, too.) The reason is that the major cost of owning a cell phone is the monthly service charge. AT&T's cheapest iPhone plan is $20 per month cheaper than the equivalent Verizon or AT&T BlackBerry plan. Over two years that's $480 - more than the price difference between the iPhone and a BlackBerry.

The lesson here goes beyond iPhones and BlackBerries. When you shop for any cell phone, do the math on the total price of the service contract. Don't be seduced by heavily discounted phone prices.

AT&T does not offer its iPhone rate out of generosity. For one thing, it saves some bucks because it does not have to pay BlackBerry for routing e-mails to your handheld. The iPhone handles e-mail internally. But most of all, AT&T wants to snare you as a customer.

A little background: What's now AT&T originally was SBC, the regional phone company for the Southwest. It has long been regarded one of the most entrepreneurial of the "Baby Bells" - as witness the fact that it swallowed up Ma Bell itself and took over the AT&T brand name. It previously had purchased AT&T's cellular business and folded it into Cingular, a joint venture with Bell South. Finally the new AT&T bought out Bell South entirely. With both the company and the wireless service now rebranded, this is a key juncture for the corporation.

After all those mergers, AT&T has emerged as the No. 1 U.S. cellular provider. Verizon is a close second. But Verizon's network is widely regarded as superior, its customer satisfaction rate is higher and its customer turnover rate is much lower than AT&T's. So AT&T needs to work very hard to stay No. 1.

AT&T seemingly gave away a lot to get the iPhone. It gave Apple an unprecedented level of control over the project, including pricing and even activation. It also went along with an Apple-orchestrated hypefest for the device that burned AT&T to some extent.

The iPhone uses AT&T's relatively slow EDGE data network, and Apple's hand-picked reviewers uniformly panned sluggish iPhone data performance when connected to it. Even in my brief testing, the speed penalty was obvious when I switched from the iPhone's built-in Wi-Fi connection to EDGE for Internet functions - especially the iPhone's glitzy browser.

EDGE provides speeds faster than dial-up connections but not the broadband speeds Verizon offers on its smartphones. AT&T is rolling out its own broadband-speed service. However, it currently is offered only in a limited number of cities, Metro Boston among them, and the iPhone doesn't have the chips needed to access it.

But AT&T got something equally unprecedented in return from Apple: a multiyear exclusive on the iPhone. In other words: if you want one, you must do business with AT&T. Plus, when a cellular broadband-capable iPhone comes on the market (as it inevitably will), the odds are pretty good that AT&T will still have the exclusive and, therefore, another chance to recruit customers.

Will the iPhone aura be enough to counter Verizon's "can you hear me now?" image? AT&T apparently is ready to live on the EDGE to find out.

Al Gordon is a Massachusetts-based media and political consultant who also writes about technology. You can read more of his articles at www.algordon.com/techblog.html and e-mail him at eagle@algordon.com.