HTC Locking Down For Good?

Usually, it’s been easy to root your HTC Android phone and do anything you wanted with it. Thus HTC Andriods have been generally regarded to being “hacker” friendly phones unlike, their Apple iPhone counter parts. However when experienced Andriod development team, AndIRC, reportedly spend their first 72 hours with the new HTC Thunderbolt trying to root it, HTC’s might not be as friendly after all.


Many in the hacker community found difficulties in trying to prepare the Thunderbolt for custom ROMS as it had a variety of obstacles such as signed kernel, signed recovery image and a signed bootloader. As the folks at Androidpolice.com said, “HTC tried to stop us. They made signed images, a signed kernel, and a signed recovery. They locked the memory. In short, the ThunderBolt is their most locked-down phone to date.”


While they were successful at rooting the Thunderbolt, more issues are predicted to come along in the future. The same guys from AndIRC report the Incredible S having a signature check much like the one on the ThunderBolt. This means if you try to flash a custom recovery image on your phone, it will try to check the signature and will block access if anything is different than the stock HTC signature. Could this mean the end of a hacker-friendly HTC?

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The End for the Incredible, and New Beginnings

The HTC Droid Incredible is on its last legs in world of smartphones and it is rumored that it will be cutoff from production starting March 31, 2011. Being an Incredible owner myself it saddens me to see such a revolutionary device to be no longer sold or made. The Motorola Droid X is also thought to be cut off on the same day.

So what will we have in replacement of these awesome devices? For the Droid Incredible there are 2 HTC replacements. First is the HTC Thunderbolt that was released on March 17th. This is the first Verizon Phone that is equipped with Verizon's 4G LTE. Internet speeds recorded from the Thunderbolt have been amazing and in the 20-30 MB per second which is better than most households these days. The Thunderbolt is the leading Android device on all networks due to its new Snapdragon processor and its new HTC sense software.

The Second HTC replacement has been revealed just not released in America yet and it is the HTC Incredible S. This is a straight replacement to the Incredible and looks very similar to its predecessor. It also has the same software of HTC sense as the Thunderbolt. It also sports a front facing camera that the Incredible didn't have.

Now the replacement for the Droid X is the Motorola Droid Bionic that has a dual core processor. It is also the first Motorola phone on Verizon to have a front facing camera. This phone is highly anticipated but hasn't been released yet.

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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!

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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…

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Thunderstorms in Town

At last there is the first phone for Verizon's 4G LTE, brought to you by Verizon at this year's CES the new HTC thunderbolt, also known by people watching the event as the HTC Tundabow. Now to the long awaited phone from Verizon that could've been called the Incredible HD or the Mecha, it is essentially the Incredible HD because of how similar it is to its HTC predecessor, the Incredible. It shows off the same 8.0 megapixel dual led back camera, but now it also has the long awaited front facing 1.3 megapixel VGA camera. It is the first phone on Verizon that a front facing camera. They also claim since they have a front facing camera they have integrated Skype in the phone heavily. They say that even if your phone is asleep it will still receive Skype messages and calls. This could be potentially bad toward the battery but they say it won’t, which I find very hard to believe. It's disappointing that this phone doesn’t have a dual core processor so it has the same old 1GHz processor. 

The screen is much like the other popular HTC phone, the EVO 4G. It is a 4.3” WVGA TFT capacitive touch screen. This screen will be really nice to watch the HD the camera can capture and even better the kickstand will allow hours of entertainment without having to hold it. Other miscellaneous specs about the new phone include: 8 GB internal memory and 32 GB preinstalled to the phone, also it will have the android 2.2 froyo software. 

One weirder thing i thought i would mention is that it has been released with LTE so it will have an LTE sim card slot. People might try to take advantage of this slot and maximize the phones potential on other networks, and if Verizon forces the new network on anyone who buys the phone they could suffer many losses because the incredible is a really good substitute to save money by just being satisfied with they’re powerful 3G network. We will see how Verizon tackles the price issue and I will let the tech world know. 

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HTC Thunderbolt, Verizon 4G LTE

The new HTC phone for Verizon 4G LTE has been seen in the wild. This is very exciting because it is the first phone to be debuted to Verizons new LTE network that they claim is the widest and most advanced 4G network. It really depends on where you live because in some areas their 4G isnt available and wont be available for a while. Another hole in the new 4G phones is the fact that it is not unlimited data which for some people could be a terrible misfortune. Photo galley from Endgadget here.

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