HTC Thunderbolt Hinted For March 17th Release

Wirefly, an online wireless retailer, recently went ahead with pre-orders of the already delayed HTC Thunderbolt and will start accepting taking pre-orders on 12:00 AM on Tuesday, March 15th. Most excitingly, they say that they will then start shipping the first of the HTC Thunderbolts on Thursday, March 17th.

This supports the many rumors that have appeared lately hinting the Thunderbolts release. The tweet (pictured above) of an HTC regional sales manager and a leaked email both point to the official release date of Verizon’s first 4GLTE phone. Another hint was announcement of an HTC release saying that “The Wireless Devices Group Introduces the HTC Thunderbolt to the Production Line-up! The HTC Thunderbolt will launch in All Channels on March 17, 2011.” While this might not be an official announcement from HTC directly, they however promised an announcement is coming soon (hopefully the Thursday).


The Wirefly announcement does answer some lingering question about the HTC Thunderbolt as well. They said that Skype video chatting will not be available pre-installed, however the standard text and voice version will be included. This mean’s like other Android phones out right now, the role of video chatting will be filled in by another third part app. Wirefly also confirmed that the HTC Thunderbolt will for sure support simultaneous voice and data over 3G. Apparently, up until now, the ability to do this was only available to the new Verizon iPhone 4G thanks to software update. However I question this statement as I have had personal experience with being able to make a phone call and surf the web in answer one of their questions without disconnecting. Is it because I have a BlackBerry or because I’m technically not on “3G”? (Verizon BB software refers to “1XEV” as 3G despite other carriers label it with a distinct 3G icon. Interesting…