HTC Thunderbolt Rundown

It’s finally arrived! The long awaited HTC Thunderbolt, Verizon’s first 4G LTE device, has finally shipped out to the eager anticipation of many. But will it live it up to the all the hype that has followed? Find out in our HTC Thunderbolt rundown!




Exterior
If you’re thinking to yourself, “Whoa, the HTC Thunderbolt looks really familiar!” you’re not that far off as the Thunderbolt seems to have inherited its good looks from past HTC phones such as Sprint’s EVO4 4G and AT&T’s Inspire 4G. Just like its fore fathers, the HTC Thunderbolt sports a huge 4.3 inch screen and an 8 megapixel camera with LED flash. In fact the Thunderbolt is almost identical to its Sprint and AT&T counterparts despite some minor details like RAM and battery capacity. (Just because I can, I took the honor of making a comparison chart to show the many similarities between the Thunderbolt, EVO 4G, and Inspire 4G). In addition, the Thunderbolt has a better, faster Qualcomm Snapdragon processor while borrowing a kickstand and dual 4G radio from the EVO 4G.



Software
As all HTC phones, the Thunderbolt is running HTC’s signature Sense UI which, just to note, is running on Android 2.2. Interestingly enough though, it’s not complete full feature as it’s missing things such as cloud abilities that came with the release of the Desire HD and HTCSense.com. Another interesting thing is that the Thunderbolt comes with the option to “Fast Boot” which makes the phone go into a sort of low-power mode kind of like a standby for computers. How I understand it you want to turn off your phone but not really turn it off, use this. The difference; boot times reduced to just 9 seconds instead of the standard 58 seconds.

Crapware. Oh Verizon how you always seem to be so consistent with this guarantee it impresses me. Like EVERY VERIZON PHONE, the HTC Thunderbolt comes with its share of junkware. Right of the top is Verizon’s signature crapware: V CAST Apps, V CAST Media, and VZ Navigator (even though Maps is preinstalled and has the same functionality for free).  In addition there are the other non-standard applications: Adobe Reader, Bitbop [Netflix-like service], Blockbuster (HA.), City ID (called-id service), FM Radio, Kindle, Let’s Golf 2 (trial, $4.99 for full version), Quickoffice (mobile version of word and excel; full version included), Rhapsody, Rockband (just a link to download the trial version), Slacker, TuneWiki.

Speed

Alright so the main feature of the HTC Thunderbolt is that it’s the first 4G LTE phone, so how fast is it? Well from the benchmarks collect from various sources, it’s fast. Like really fast. Gizmodo reports download speeds of about 14.77Mbps and upload speeds of 5.33Mbp. Engadget gives some equally astonishing reports with an average download speed of 17.81Mbps (some even as high as 24Mbps!!!) and an average upload speed of 5.99Mbps. To put that in comparison, that’s faster than most people’s home internet connection!