It’s not as cut-and-dry as last night’s declaration that a new Retina Display-equipped iPod Touch is due in the next few weeks, but our man John Gruber just put up a lengthy post on the long-rumored CDMA iPhone for Verizon in which he says the mythical handset is codenamed “N92” and has reached “engineering verification test” (EVT) status. According to Gruber, that’s just one step below “design verification test,” which is what that stolen iPhone 4 prototype was — meaning the CDMA iPhone is apparently just two hops away from production. Mix in persistent rumors of large CDMA chipset orders these past few weeks and a dash of AT&T hinting that exclusivity might be over, and it’s sounding like ol’ N92 could well arrive in January as first reported by Bloomberg — perhaps at Verizon’s CES press conference. In Gruber’s words, “the CDMA iPhone is no longer a cold storage, keep-it-alive-just-in-case-we-need-it project.”
