We had a pretty good idea Verizon's Hub would be loosed on Super Bowl Sunday, and sure enough, the landline killing machine is now available for ordering. The device itself will run you $199.99 on a two-year contract (after all applicable rebates), and if you're still wondering whether or not this thing is even worth your time, why not have a look at our hands-on / impressions?

[Thanks, Carlos]

We've been on the trail of the Verizon Hub since way back when it was called the Verizon One, in fact, but it's just been officially announced, and there are plenty of details to report now. The system boasts a 7-inch touchscreen display, and will work with Verizon wireless subscribers handset(s) to eliminate the need for a landline (people still have those!?) The idea here is that the hub can sync to your calendar, contacts, maps, traffic and weather reports via broadband. It can also send and receive text messages, and do all kinds of cute little tasks like send driving directions to your phone. Subscribers have to live in an E911-capable area, and will be able to bring any phone number with them if they want to sign up for new service. The hardware's going to cost $200 (after a $50 mail-in rebate) with a subscription fee of $35 per month -- which comes with unlimited minutes and texts to and from the device. It'll be available starting February 1st. Get ready.

[Via Phone Scoop]

We're still trying to piece together the Verizon Hub mystery -- namely whether it'll be available outside the realm of Verizon's FiOS broadband customer base -- but either way, we have some evidence here that it'll play nice with the Verizon Wireless handset of your choice. The device was designed from the start to be the be-all, end-all wireline home base (hence the name), so it really comes as no surprise that there'd be some interaction with mobiles for those rare occasions when you simply must leave your home. What you see here are a couple of diagrams (just follow the arrows!) involving the transfer of information to and from Verizon Wireless-branded cellphones; in the first, an address is looked up using the Hub's yellow pages facility, located on a map, then transferred to an LG VX9400. In the second, a lovely photograph from a beach (seriously, what are we doing in front of a computer right now?) is snapped and transferred to a Hub, where it's displayed in real time. Fun stuff -- let's hope owners of any old broadband connection are going to be able to partake.

We've gotten the inside track on a few dates on Verizon's radar for the next few months, and it looks like the boys and girls in red are prepping an interesting mix of exclusive and Sprint catch-ups to keep customers fat and happy. As handsets go, the Motorola Q9c is planned for April along with the TouchFLO-powered XV6900, LG enV2, and the CDMA rendition of the BlackBerry Curve (so much for exclusivity clauses on this one, it seems), while the Samsung Glyde is currently slated for late April or early May. Centro fans will be happy to hear that the diminutive Garnet phone will finally hit Verizon following Sprint and AT&T launches in the tail end of May or the beginning of June, followed shortly by the Nokia 6205, which apparently isn't either the 2505 or 7205 unless one of those flips have been renumbered.

As technology goes, Verizon looks to launch EV-DO Rev. A-based push-to-talk services -- Sprint folks will know this as Qualcomm's QChat -- toward the end of May. We've also caught wind of something called "Verizon Hub," which we're told will go head-to-head with T-Mobile's HotSpot@Home service. It's not known whether this'll be a WiFi setup (a la HotSpot@Home) or adopt Sprint's CDMA femtocell strategy, but seeing how Verizon and Sprint seem to be endlessly engaged in a game of cat and mouse, we wouldn't be surprised to see 'em go with femtocells. We don't have a date on Hub just yet, but it's targeting the second half of the year at the earliest.

Update: Commenters are noting that Verizon's do-all FiOS phone bares the "Verizon Hub" name, though it doesn't go head-to-head with HotSpot@Home -- and the Hub we're referring to is showing up on Verizon Wireless roadmaps. Weird. We'll keep a close eye on this one.