OVERVIEWS OF HTC THUNDERBOLT

                                    


With the ThunderBolt, HTC has delivered yet another “first 4G smartphone” following its EVO 4G for Sprint (and the often forgotten MAX 4G introduced in 2008). It’s the first handset to run on Verizon’s brand new 4G LTE network, and it’s an Android smartphone powerhouse that is easily the fastest smartphone on the planet in terms of data speeds. That’s not to say the device is perfect, however. The release of Verizon’s first 4G handset was pushed back several times, spanning almost two months, and I’m not so sure all of the wrinkles were ironed out even after all of the delays. But the ThunderBolt is finally here and I’ve spent some quality time with it over the past week or so. Read on to see if this is not only the fastest smartphone on the planet, but one of the best as well.

The HTC ThunderBolt packs a punch in the specifications department. In addition to being the first Verizon handset to be released with 4G LTE compatibility, the ThunderBolt stays at the top of the smartphone pack with competitive specs like a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, a 4.3-inch Super LCD display, an 8-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, and more.

As far as the build quality of the HTC ThunderBolt is concerned, it’s a tank — but I’ll get to that part in a moment. The ThunderBolt seems to be very well manufactured in typical HTC style; it feels very sturdy, durable, and solid. There are no creaks, no parts wiggling, and nothing I could conceivably see being an issue down the road with normal use and wear and tear.

The device is, however, extremely large and heavy. It’s one of the widest, thickest, and heaviest smartphones on the market. It absolutely dwarfs an iPhone 4, for instance, and it could pretty easily could swallow a T-Mobile myTouch 4G in a couple bites. It doesn’t necessarily feel as thick as it looks thanks to the heavily tapered edges, but some slick tapering can’t do anything to mask the phone’s heft. Another thing that just might be a personal niggle is the kickstand… I mean, I just can’t honestly ever see myself using it in any scenario. As heavy as the ThunderBolt is, I would like to have seen HTC strip out as much as possible, and the kickstand definitely could have been stripped.

The design identity of the ThunderBolt is typical HTC — literally, aside from little changes here and there, one HTC device could pass for another most of the time these days. The ThunderBolt specifically doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of differentiation beyond its bulk, at least, and its design seems dated. Compared to, say, the aluminum unibody HTC Inspire 4G, the ThunderBolt just feels kind of last year. That, coupled with the viciously thick and heavy body makes it hard to swallow from a hardware perspective alone. Thankfully that’s not all a smartphone is nowadays.
                                 
The 4.3-inch display on the HTC ThunderBolt is beautiful. The viewing angles are here are straight up incredible — noticeably better than the HTC EVO’s screen. Colors are very rich, whites are bright, and text is pretty crisp. With such a big display, however, the 800 x 480-pixel WVGA resolution shows its shortcomings. This is a common issue among devices with larger displays: since they spread the same number of pixels over a larger surface compared to modern sub-4-inch displays, the result is a less impressive picture. The ThunderBolt’s display is still great, but I would have loved to see one of HTC’s qHD displays on here.

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APPLICATION OF HTC THUNDERBOLT

                       
           
The first 4G LTE cell phone for Verizon Wireless, the HTC Thunderbolt, lands with a bang, scorching the landscape and sending mere 3G phones fleeing for cover. This is the fastest Internet phone ever, and it wins our Editors' Choice for the top touch-screen smartphone on Verizon Wireless. But that scorching speed has a price: it burns up the phone's battery, so you'll need to bring a spare.

The HTC Thunderbolt looks and feels huge. It's classy looking, though, in all-gray with a glass front and a soft-touch back. There's a small 1.3-megapixel camera next to the earpiece, and a larger 8-megapixel shooter on the back, along with a kickstand, so you can prop the phone up on a table or a desk. The 4.3-inch, 800-by-480 screen looks unusually rich. But at 6.4 ounces, the Thunderbolt will weigh down any pocket, and at 4.8 by 2.6 by 0.5 inches (HWD), it won't fit in some of them. That's the price you pay for being an early LTE adopter.

Let's get to the most important thing first: this smartphone has the fastest Internet access, ever. It sets the Web on fire.

Verizon's LTE network currently runs in about 40 metro areas, give or take a few, and it's constantly expanding. The carrier doesn't charge extra for LTE: the $30/month smartphone data plan costs the same as a 3G data plan does. And for now, you get unlimited data. An extra $20/month buys you 2GB of data for a laptop or other device to use via USB or Wi-Fi tethering. The phone's hotspot mode supports eight devices rather than the usual five (the faster to use up your 2GB allotment with.)

I ran Ookla's industry-standard speed test on the phone itself, on a PC connected via USB cable, and on a PC connected via Wi-Fi hotspot. Speeds were awesome. As expected, tethering is the fastest— you're using the phone's modem, but a fast PC processor—followed by the on-phone speed test and then the Wi-Fi hotspot, because Wi-Fi bleeds speed.

On average, I got 11.8Mbps down tethered, 9.6Mbps on the phone and 6.3Mbps with the hotspot. Upload speeds were also fast; about 2Mbps with the hotspot and 4Mbps tethered. (The upload part of the Ookla speed test app isn't compatible with this phone.) Latency was generally around 85ms.

These numbers translate into super-fast file downloads; I grabbed a 99MB episode of The Colbert Report from Bitbop in four minutes. Most smaller files, like anything from the Android Market, just zip along. With unlimited data, I downloaded huge video files without fear or concern, and that felt great.

To test Web page loads, I compared the Thunderbolt against an HTC EVO 4G ($199, 4 stars) for Sprint. Around here, I can get between 3-5Mbps on Sprint's 4G WiMAX network. Complex Web pages loaded about 1.5 times as fast on the Thunderbolt as on the EVO, with many pages coming in under 10 seconds.

That's all compared to Sprint's 4G. Compared to Verizon's 3G, the LTE network is even faster. In last year's 18-city tests, we got average speeds around 1Mbps down on Verizon's 3G, with latency of about 100ms compared to LTE's 85ms.

Early Verizon modems had trouble switching between 3G and 4G. I got the Thunderbolt to successfully trade from 4G down to 3G, and back up to 4G, depending on coverage. Switching up does take longer than dropping down; while the phone can drop to 3G in a instant, it takes about two minutes to get back to 4G.
                                 
The Internet access here is so fast that it becomes critically important that Verizon offers an unlimited data plan. Even without tethering, you can eat a lot of data very quickly.

If you don't have LTE, the phone also offers 3G data and 802.11n WiFi. Speeds on 3G were comparable with other top-of-the-line Verizon smartphones like the Motorola Droid X ($199, 4.5 stars)

Hey, remember all those AT&T ads where they complained you can't talk and surf at the same time on Verizon? No longer. The Thunderbolt allows simultaneous talking and Internet access on both 3G and 4G networks. I tried it, and it worked well.

As a voice phone, the Thunderbolt is just fine. RF reception is on the good side of average. Voice quality is strong; the earpiece is loud and there's an unusual amount of side-tone, the reflection of your own voice in your ear that prevents you from yelling. I like that, because it makes you talk more quietly into the phone and should help make Thunderbolt users more socially acceptable in public places. The speakerphone isn't very loud, but it's just loud enough to be usable outdoors. Voices transmitted through the mic are totally intelligible but sound a bit computerized; the speakerphone lets through a bit more background noise than I'd like, but it isn't awful. The phone paired easily with my Aliph Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset ($129, 4.5 stars) and activated the voice dialing system.

Battery life here is an interesting issue. On 3G, it's great. I got nearly eight hours of talk time on the surprisingly small 1400 mAh battery. In another test, I watched a local video file with the phone connected to the LTE network, but not downloading. I got about six hours of video playback.

Heavy LTE use, on the other hand, totally nukes the battery. I tapped out the battery in only two hours and 20 minutes of LTE streaming using Bitbop and YouTube. If you intend to do a lot of 4G surfing, you'll have trouble lasting a day. Since there's no way to turn off 4G, use Wi-Fi when you can to save battery life.

Another option is to buy a second battery. Verizon offers a second standard battery for $39.99 and a gigantic 2750 mAh "extended" battery for $49.99. Two batteries, or one extended battery, would probably give this phone a full day of life.

The Thunderbolt runs on a 1GHz, second-generation Qualcomm MSM8655 Snapdragon processor and runs Android 2.2 with HTC's attractive Sense overlay. On our benchmarks, it performed as well as any high-end smartphone that doesn't have Nvidia's dual-core Tegra 2 chipset. Unless you're an avid gamer, there's no reason to skip this and wait for a for Tegra 2.

HTC and Verizon have baked a ton of extra software into this phone. Much of it is bloatware, stubs for apps that charge you every month. Verizon has actually taken bloatware to a new level, installing an entire alternative app store called "V Cast Apps" that is sluggish and ugly, but has one big advantage: you can charge app purchases to your phone bill. Of course, you also have access to the 100,000-plus apps in the standard Android Market, along with whatever you sideload from other sources.

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