04:20
htc
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. It's one of The Best Android Phones, as well as one of the The 10 Best Touch-Screen Phones. But the Thunderbolt's 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.
View Slideshow See all (10) slides
HTC Thunderbolt Home
HTC Thunderbolt Menu
HTC Thunderbolt Right Side
HTC Thunderbolt Back
More
LTE Internet Access and Speeds
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.)
Specifications
Operating System
Android OS
Screen Size
4.3 inches
Screen Details
480-by-800, 16.7m-color TFT LCD screen
Camera
Yes
Network
CDMA
Bands
850, 1900, 700
High-Speed Data
1xRTT, EVDO Rev A, LTE
Processor Speed
1 GHz
More
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)
Phone Performance and Battery Life
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.
Processor, Android and Apps
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.
he HTC ThunderBolt delivers big, in nearly every sense of the word. It lives up to its sky high expectations (see huge banner below from CES 2011). And it’s physically really big and heavy. It’s big in hype, big in performance, and big in form factor — and it has one big caveat.
The ThunderBolt is Verizon’s first 4G LTE phone. And, while AT&T and T-Mobile are abusing the term 4G and causing it to lose its meaning, Verizon’s LTE is a legitimate next generation experience with uber-fast download/upload speeds and lower latency connections that provide better responsiveness. For the ThunderBolt, all of that connectivity goodness is paired with a phone that has screeching fast hardware to keep up with the wireless speed boost.
That said, while the ThunderBolt gives us a peek at the future, it’s also a 1.0 device that has a couple imperfections, which potential buyers need to be aware of before jumping on board.
Photo gallery
HTC ThunderBolt photos: The Ferrari of smartphones
Specifications
Carrier: Verizon Wireless
OS: Android 2.2 (Froyo) with HTC Sense UI
Processor: 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon (QSD8255), Adreno 205 GPU, and MDM9600 chipset for 3G/4G
RAM: 768MB
Storage: 8GB internal, 32GB microSD (pre-installed)
Display: 4.3-inch WVGA with 480×800 resolution
Battery: Lithium-ion with 1400 mAh capacity
Ports: microUSB 2.0, 3.5mm audio jack, SIM slot
Weight: 6.23 ounces
Dimensions: 4.75 x 2.44 x 0.56 inches
Camera: 8MP with auto-focus, dual LED flash, HD video capture, 1.3MP front-facing camera
Sensors: Accelerometer, A-GPS, digital compass, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor
Keyboard: Virtual QWERTY
Networks: CDMA 800/1900Mhz (2G); CDMA2000 EV-DO (3G); 700Mhz LTE (4G)
Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n; Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR
Tethering: USB + mobile Wi-Fi hotspot
Price: $249 (with 2-year contract)
Who is it for?
This is a phone for someone who needs all the performance they can get out of a mobile device. I have tested a lot of smartphones — iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone 7, Palm, and more — and this is the fastest one I have ever seen. It loads apps, Web pages, videos, and documents at near-desktop speeds. Obviously, the +10Mbps speeds (bursting to up to +30Mbps) of Verizon’s LTE network helps a lot, but this device is still really fast on 3G and Wi-Fi. For the road warrior who does a lot of work on the smartphone and needs a workhorse device, a widespread mobile network, and a future-proof phone that will still be relevant in two years, the ThunderBolt fits the bill.
What problems does it solve?
The HTC ThunderBolt is arguably the world’s first smartphone to experience true 4G speeds over 30Mbps with hardware than can keep up the pace. Sure, there have been Samsung phones running on WiMAX in South Korea, for example, but those don’t have the latency improvements that Verizon has made with LTE and the devices themselves haven’t had the kind of horsepower that you get in the ThunderBolt, with its upgraded 1GHz Snapdragon, Adreno 205 GPU, and MDM9600 chip for LTE. With its 4G LTE phones, Verizon has also solved the issue of simultaneous voice and data. In the past, you couldn’t make a call and browse a Web page at the same time because of the limitations of Verizon’s CDMA network. With 4G, Verizon is sending voice over CDMA and using LTE for data.
Standout features
Performance sets a high bar - As I’ve already mentioned, the ThunderBolt is really fast. The combination of the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon processor (single core), a dedicated GPU (Adreno 205), LTE chip (MDM9600), 768MB of RAM, and 8GB of integrated eMMC storage gives the ThunderBolt a lot of horsepower under the hood.
Top-of-the-line hardware profile - In addition of the high-end chips, the ThunderBolt also sports a bight, crisp WVGA display, an 8MP camera on the back, a 1.3MP camera on the front, a 32GB SD card (included), a 1400 mAh battery, and all the latest digital sensors. The camera in the ThunderBolt is a nice improvement over last year’s HTC EVO. Here’s an example of a photo I took using the ThunderBolt’s camera.
Industrial-strength form factor - As I wrote in my review of the HTC Inspire (which has a nearly identical form factor to the ThunderBolt), this hardware design is appealing with its unibody aluminum frame. It combines the unibody frame of the Google Nexus One and the HTC Desire with the square body of the HTC EVO (which has a shiny plastic bezel). The result is a sturdy, attractive metal body. The battery cover on the back of the ThunderBolt is plastic but has a steely finish that successfully masquerades as metal. The phone is large and a little heavy, but it’s one of the best hardware designs on the market.
HTC Sense UI adds value - I don’t like any of the software skins that the hardware vendors layer on top of Android, with the notable exception of HTC’s Sense UI. All of the other Android skins subtract from the Android experience, in my opinion, and would be better off just running the stock OS. HTC is the only vendor that improves on Android with attractive UI elements as well as useful widgets and services.
What’s wrong?
4G battery life - If you look at my 4G speedtests with the ThunderBolt, you’ll see that it was easily topping 10Mbps downloads and uploads on Verizon LTE. I was regularly seeing bursts of speed that were faster than what I have on my cable modem at home. However, all of that crazy speed comes at a price. Almost immediately after the ThunderBolt was released, reports started surfacing that it only gets about 4 hours of battery life on 4G. After spending a week testing the ThunderBolt on LTE in Orlando (while attending CTIA Wireless), I can confirm that 4G drains the battery in about half the day. On 4G, you have to smartly manage battery power, use the extended battery or a add-on battery pack, or charge the phone at mid-day in order to make it through a full work day with the ThunderBolt. You can turn off 4G so that you can get through a whole day — I made it through a whole day of normal use on a mix of 3G and Wi-Fi and still had 70% of the battery left. However, turning off 4G on the world’s first LTE phone is disappointing. The ThunderBolt is still staggeringly fast on 3G and Wi-Fi, but 4G is its killer feature — especially when using it as a mobile hotspot — but if you’re going to use it for an extended period of time then you’ll need to plug it in. To squeeze out more battery life, check out my companion article, Five battery tips for HTC Thunderbolt.
No dual core - As powerful as the ThunderBolt is and as much as it is packed with top-of-the-line hardware, the one area where it comes up a little short in hardware is its single-core Qualcomm processor. All of the other high-end Android smartphones in this category are going to be running dual core processors in 2011 — usually the NVIDIA Tegra 2. However, HTC has a tight partnership with Qualcomm, which hasn’t come to market with its dual core solution yet. The ThunderBolt doesn’t appear to suffer from any speed lapses because of this, but dual core can improve battery life and multitasking.
Bottom line for business
At CES 2011, I wrote that the HTC ThunderBolt was the early favorite for the best smartphone of 2011. After testing it for two weeks — including some extended time on 4G — I’m ready to officially put the ThunderBolt at the top of my current Android leaderboard. And, with iPhone 5 probably delayed until Fall and other LTE phones on hold until this summer, the ThunderBolt is likely to remain on top for a while.
Despite its 4G battery problems, this phone is a powerhouse. It sets a new standard for how fast we can really go on a smartphone and provides a peek at what the future will look like for nearly all smartphones once the next generation of mobile broadband is fully deployed and the devices are optimized for it. In the short term, this is still a lightening fast device on 3G and Wi-Fi, with the ability for seismic 4G bursts when needed. Plus, it has a great hardware design and HTC’s excellent software enhancements for Android.
Competitive products
HTC Inspire
Motorola Atrix
Google Nexus S
Apple iPhone 4
Motorola Droid Bionic
Where to get more info
HTC’s official ThunderBolt page
Verizon’s official HTC ThunderBolt page
Photos: HTC ThunderBolt, the Ferrari of smartphones
Five battery tips for HTC ThunderBolt (and other Androids)
This was originally published on TechRepublic.
Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.
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.
View Slideshow See all (10) slides
HTC Thunderbolt Home
HTC Thunderbolt Menu
HTC Thunderbolt Right Side
HTC Thunderbolt Back
More
LTE Internet Access and Speeds
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.)
Specifications
Operating System
Android OS
Screen Size
4.3 inches
Screen Details
480-by-800, 16.7m-color TFT LCD screen
Camera
Yes
Network
CDMA
Bands
850, 1900, 700
High-Speed Data
1xRTT, EVDO Rev A, LTE
Processor Speed
1 GHz
More
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)
Phone Performance and Battery Life
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.
Processor, Android and Apps
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.
he HTC ThunderBolt delivers big, in nearly every sense of the word. It lives up to its sky high expectations (see huge banner below from CES 2011). And it’s physically really big and heavy. It’s big in hype, big in performance, and big in form factor — and it has one big caveat.
The ThunderBolt is Verizon’s first 4G LTE phone. And, while AT&T and T-Mobile are abusing the term 4G and causing it to lose its meaning, Verizon’s LTE is a legitimate next generation experience with uber-fast download/upload speeds and lower latency connections that provide better responsiveness. For the ThunderBolt, all of that connectivity goodness is paired with a phone that has screeching fast hardware to keep up with the wireless speed boost.
That said, while the ThunderBolt gives us a peek at the future, it’s also a 1.0 device that has a couple imperfections, which potential buyers need to be aware of before jumping on board.
Photo gallery
HTC ThunderBolt photos: The Ferrari of smartphones
Specifications
Carrier: Verizon Wireless
OS: Android 2.2 (Froyo) with HTC Sense UI
Processor: 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon (QSD8255), Adreno 205 GPU, and MDM9600 chipset for 3G/4G
RAM: 768MB
Storage: 8GB internal, 32GB microSD (pre-installed)
Display: 4.3-inch WVGA with 480×800 resolution
Battery: Lithium-ion with 1400 mAh capacity
Ports: microUSB 2.0, 3.5mm audio jack, SIM slot
Weight: 6.23 ounces
Dimensions: 4.75 x 2.44 x 0.56 inches
Camera: 8MP with auto-focus, dual LED flash, HD video capture, 1.3MP front-facing camera
Sensors: Accelerometer, A-GPS, digital compass, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor
Keyboard: Virtual QWERTY
Networks: CDMA 800/1900Mhz (2G); CDMA2000 EV-DO (3G); 700Mhz LTE (4G)
Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n; Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR
Tethering: USB + mobile Wi-Fi hotspot
Price: $249 (with 2-year contract)
Who is it for?
This is a phone for someone who needs all the performance they can get out of a mobile device. I have tested a lot of smartphones — iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone 7, Palm, and more — and this is the fastest one I have ever seen. It loads apps, Web pages, videos, and documents at near-desktop speeds. Obviously, the +10Mbps speeds (bursting to up to +30Mbps) of Verizon’s LTE network helps a lot, but this device is still really fast on 3G and Wi-Fi. For the road warrior who does a lot of work on the smartphone and needs a workhorse device, a widespread mobile network, and a future-proof phone that will still be relevant in two years, the ThunderBolt fits the bill.
What problems does it solve?
The HTC ThunderBolt is arguably the world’s first smartphone to experience true 4G speeds over 30Mbps with hardware than can keep up the pace. Sure, there have been Samsung phones running on WiMAX in South Korea, for example, but those don’t have the latency improvements that Verizon has made with LTE and the devices themselves haven’t had the kind of horsepower that you get in the ThunderBolt, with its upgraded 1GHz Snapdragon, Adreno 205 GPU, and MDM9600 chip for LTE. With its 4G LTE phones, Verizon has also solved the issue of simultaneous voice and data. In the past, you couldn’t make a call and browse a Web page at the same time because of the limitations of Verizon’s CDMA network. With 4G, Verizon is sending voice over CDMA and using LTE for data.
Standout features
Performance sets a high bar - As I’ve already mentioned, the ThunderBolt is really fast. The combination of the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon processor (single core), a dedicated GPU (Adreno 205), LTE chip (MDM9600), 768MB of RAM, and 8GB of integrated eMMC storage gives the ThunderBolt a lot of horsepower under the hood.
Top-of-the-line hardware profile - In addition of the high-end chips, the ThunderBolt also sports a bight, crisp WVGA display, an 8MP camera on the back, a 1.3MP camera on the front, a 32GB SD card (included), a 1400 mAh battery, and all the latest digital sensors. The camera in the ThunderBolt is a nice improvement over last year’s HTC EVO. Here’s an example of a photo I took using the ThunderBolt’s camera.
Industrial-strength form factor - As I wrote in my review of the HTC Inspire (which has a nearly identical form factor to the ThunderBolt), this hardware design is appealing with its unibody aluminum frame. It combines the unibody frame of the Google Nexus One and the HTC Desire with the square body of the HTC EVO (which has a shiny plastic bezel). The result is a sturdy, attractive metal body. The battery cover on the back of the ThunderBolt is plastic but has a steely finish that successfully masquerades as metal. The phone is large and a little heavy, but it’s one of the best hardware designs on the market.
HTC Sense UI adds value - I don’t like any of the software skins that the hardware vendors layer on top of Android, with the notable exception of HTC’s Sense UI. All of the other Android skins subtract from the Android experience, in my opinion, and would be better off just running the stock OS. HTC is the only vendor that improves on Android with attractive UI elements as well as useful widgets and services.
What’s wrong?
4G battery life - If you look at my 4G speedtests with the ThunderBolt, you’ll see that it was easily topping 10Mbps downloads and uploads on Verizon LTE. I was regularly seeing bursts of speed that were faster than what I have on my cable modem at home. However, all of that crazy speed comes at a price. Almost immediately after the ThunderBolt was released, reports started surfacing that it only gets about 4 hours of battery life on 4G. After spending a week testing the ThunderBolt on LTE in Orlando (while attending CTIA Wireless), I can confirm that 4G drains the battery in about half the day. On 4G, you have to smartly manage battery power, use the extended battery or a add-on battery pack, or charge the phone at mid-day in order to make it through a full work day with the ThunderBolt. You can turn off 4G so that you can get through a whole day — I made it through a whole day of normal use on a mix of 3G and Wi-Fi and still had 70% of the battery left. However, turning off 4G on the world’s first LTE phone is disappointing. The ThunderBolt is still staggeringly fast on 3G and Wi-Fi, but 4G is its killer feature — especially when using it as a mobile hotspot — but if you’re going to use it for an extended period of time then you’ll need to plug it in. To squeeze out more battery life, check out my companion article, Five battery tips for HTC Thunderbolt.
No dual core - As powerful as the ThunderBolt is and as much as it is packed with top-of-the-line hardware, the one area where it comes up a little short in hardware is its single-core Qualcomm processor. All of the other high-end Android smartphones in this category are going to be running dual core processors in 2011 — usually the NVIDIA Tegra 2. However, HTC has a tight partnership with Qualcomm, which hasn’t come to market with its dual core solution yet. The ThunderBolt doesn’t appear to suffer from any speed lapses because of this, but dual core can improve battery life and multitasking.
Bottom line for business
At CES 2011, I wrote that the HTC ThunderBolt was the early favorite for the best smartphone of 2011. After testing it for two weeks — including some extended time on 4G — I’m ready to officially put the ThunderBolt at the top of my current Android leaderboard. And, with iPhone 5 probably delayed until Fall and other LTE phones on hold until this summer, the ThunderBolt is likely to remain on top for a while.
Despite its 4G battery problems, this phone is a powerhouse. It sets a new standard for how fast we can really go on a smartphone and provides a peek at what the future will look like for nearly all smartphones once the next generation of mobile broadband is fully deployed and the devices are optimized for it. In the short term, this is still a lightening fast device on 3G and Wi-Fi, with the ability for seismic 4G bursts when needed. Plus, it has a great hardware design and HTC’s excellent software enhancements for Android.
Competitive products
HTC Inspire
Motorola Atrix
Google Nexus S
Apple iPhone 4
Motorola Droid Bionic
Where to get more info
HTC’s official ThunderBolt page
Verizon’s official HTC ThunderBolt page
Photos: HTC ThunderBolt, the Ferrari of smartphones
Five battery tips for HTC ThunderBolt (and other Androids)
This was originally published on TechRepublic.
Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.
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