With only a few days to go for the launch of the Verizon Wireless version of the iPhone 4, Apple has recently posted iOS 4.2.6 for the forthcoming CDMA handset; apparently for the benefit of the journalists and bloggers who have supposedly been handed out review units of the device.

Available as a direct 652 MB download from Apple, the new iOS 4.2.6 version has been listed as for iPhone 3.3, which happens to be the identifier for the CDMA version of iPhone 4 that will arrive on the Verizon network on February 10.

Since Verizon demonstrated the iPhone - at its January 11 press event - running iOS 4.2.5 version, the release of the iOS 4.2.6 indicates that Apple has clearly introduced some minor changes to the software.

In early January Apple had issued a beta build of its next significant update to iOS - the version 4.3 -, with the pre-release software reportedly boasting support for a number of new multi-touch gestures, along with GSM support for the Personal Hotspot feature included in iOS 4.2.6.

Meanwhile, noting that the Verizon and Apple websites have been fittingly prepped up when the Verizon version becomes available online on Thursday morning at 3 a. m. ET/midnight PT for the present Verizon subscribers, the carrier's chief operating officer John Stratton said: "We expect unprecedented demand, bigger than anything we've ever seen before. We feel good about being able to handle it."