HTC ThunderBolt Review

The great: The HTC ThunderBolt presents extremely quickly 4G information speeds. The Android 2.2 smartphone also supports simultaneous voice and information above 3G and boasts a big four.3-inch touch screen, ample storage, and a great camera.

The undesirable: Battery life requires a huge hit when making use of 4G. There's no method to toggle in between 3G and 4G.

The bottom line: The HTC ThunderBolt lights up with blazingly quickly information speeds, but these who want 4G now really should be mindful that it requires a huge toll around the smartphone's battery life.

Introduced at CES 2011, the HTC ThunderBolt is Verizon's very first 4G LTE, and it really is lastly offered for $249.99 having a two-year contract. The Android two.two smartphone could not give the most recent and greatest (e.g., dual-core processor), but with all the carrier promising typical download speeds of 5Mbps to 12Mbps and upload speeds of 2Mbps to 5Mbps, it is no surprise why numerous are clamoring to obtain their hands on this gadget. This contains us, which can be why we had been so excited to take the HTC ThunderBolt out to get a test-drive. The lightning-fast smartphone delivers on a lot of fronts, however it also comes at a price for iPad 3 release date.

Layout
The HTC ThunderBolt is cut from precisely the same cloth because the HTC Evo 4G along with the HTC Wish HD, so if you have ever handled these devices, you then possess a pretty very good notion of what to anticipate from the ThunderBolt.

At four.75 inches tall by two.44 inches broad by 0.56 inch thick and six.23 ounces, the ThunderBolt is not for all those who favor dainty devices. The smartphone is huge and really slightly thicker and heavier than the Evo, but it is manageable and also the tapered back and soft-touch finish make it comfy to hold inside the hand. As we've come to count on from HTC, the telephone is solidly constructed and includes a good, premium really feel to it iPhone 5 release date.


The HTC ThunderBolt features a related design and style for the Evo 4G.

On front, you have got precisely the same four.3-inch WVGA (800x480 pixels) touch screen because the Evo. You'll find higher-resolution displays around, like these around the Motorola Atrix 4G or iPhone four, however the ThunderBolt's screen nonetheless holds up, with clear and vivid image good quality. Text was simple to study, and Internet pages and video looked beautiful around the massive screen.

The touch screen can also be responsive. Apps launched as we tapped them, and we had been ready to smoothly navigate as a result of the property screens and menus. The show also capabilities a proximity sensor and built-in accelerometer, which was speedy to alter screen orientation when we rotated the cellphone.

The front-facing camera sits correct above the screen around the perfect; under the show are the residence, menu, back, and search navigation buttons. Meanwhile, the 8-megapixel camera and flash are positioned on back, but we seriously want there was a committed camera button around the telephone. As a substitute, you are going to must use the touch screen to snap images.

Around the brilliant side, the ThunderBolt includes a sturdy kickstand so you may prop the telephone on a desk to view movies, conduct speakerphone calls, plus the like. There is a Micro-USB port around the left side, plus a volume rocker occupies the correct side. Lastly, on best from the gadget, you are going to discover a power/lock button and three.5mm headphone jack.


The ThunderBolt functions a built-in kickstand that enables you to spot the cellphone on a table and view movies, slideshows, and much more.

The HTC ThunderBolt comes packaged with an AC adapter, a USB cable, a preinstalled 32GB microSD card, and reference materials.

4G functions and functionality
Ahead of we get for the phone's more-basic characteristics, we believed we'd tackle the HTC ThunderBolt's complete raison d'etre, and that is 4G help. As talked about earlier, the ThunderBolt may be the 1st smartphone to function on Verizon's LTE 4G network, which guarantees typical download speeds of 5Mbps to 12Mbps and upload speeds of 2Mbps to 5Mbps.

Provided the impressive benefits we got utilizing Verizon's LG VL600 LTE USB modem, you'd assume we'd be just a little a lot more ready for what we knowledgeable around the ThunderBolt, but we had been nevertheless blown away by what we saw. It is rapidly. True rapidly HTC thunderbolt review.

Operating Ookla's Speedtest.net app around the handset yielded some erratic and suspicious benefits (upload speeds have been registering as much as 39.79Mbps), so we also measured speeds utilizing the telephone as a mobile hot spot and as a tethered modem. Together with the ThunderBolt linked to our MacBook Pro as a mobile hot spot right here in New York, we have been ready to acquire common download speeds of 7.41Mbps and upload speeds of six.56Mbps.

By comparison, the HTC Evo 4G from Sprint averaged three.42Mbps down and 0.93Mpbs up; the Samsung Galaxy S 4G on T-Mobile averaged four.17Mbps down and 1.68Mbps up; plus the HTC Inspire 4G on AT&T averaged 1.75Mbps down and 0.31Mbps up.

We got even better benefits when we had the ThunderBolt tethered to our Lenovo T61 ThinkPad. We averaged download speeds of 15.58Mbps and upload speeds of three.44Mbps. (See example speed check under.)