HTC Thunderbolt

wikidlad

wikidlad

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 7, 2005
Messages
447
Anyone else waiting for this?...Went into Best Buy today and spoke to a rep..placed a pre-order..28th is when he says he can let me pick it up.

Hate the idea of paying this much ($299) for a phone but I want it to last at least 2 years

We'll see
 
wikidlad said:
Anyone else waiting for this?...Went into Best Buy today and spoke to a rep..placed a pre-order..28th is when he says he can let me pick it up.

Hate the idea of paying this much ($299) for a phone but I want it to last at least 2 years

We'll see
Click to expand...

Just reviewed its specs.. Sounds alot like the MyTouch I have had for quite some time.. Oh Wait I also have a FFC..

The atrix is the only exciting phone coming this month & after that it will be the HTC Pyramid. Everything else is just old news rehashed.
 
wikidlad said:
Anyone else waiting for this?...Went into Best Buy today and spoke to a rep..placed a pre-order..28th is when he says he can let me pick it up.

Hate the idea of paying this much ($299) for a phone but I want it to last at least 2 years

We'll see
Click to expand...

I wouldn't get too excited about the thing lasting 2 years. Its basically a Verizon version of the Evo 4G, and the Evo has been out for almost 9 months now. Only Verizon's marketing is allowing them to sell the phone for $299. Once the honeymoon is over and people realize the phone is nothing special the price will drop dramatically. Heck the Thunderbolt already looks old compared to the Atrix :D

Also cross your fingers and pray the Thunderbolt has better battery life than the EVO. Otherwise you are going to end up with a charger in the office, one in the car, and two at your house just to keep the thing running when you want it.
 
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I have been waiting for this phone for a while now. They keep pushing back the release date. When I say they, I mean there never really was a release date but the speculation on it kept getting pushed back. This will be my first smart phone and I waited for the first LTE phone. I hope I don't get burned by the early adopter tax on this one.
 
Imo HTC doesn't make a bad phone, and yeah the Atrix and LG Optimus x2 with their Nvidia Tegra duel core cpus do make everything look aged. Places like Best Buy and Walmart won't see the phone for $299 very long. Great phone to want, just wait a little bit and see the price drops.
 
ocellaris said:
I wouldn't get too excited about the thing lasting 2 years. Its basically a Verizon version of the Evo 4G, and the Evo has been out for almost 9 months now. Only Verizon's marketing is allowing them to sell the phone for $299. Once the honeymoon is over and people realize the phone is nothing special the price will drop dramatically. Heck the Thunderbolt already looks old compared to the Atrix :D

Also cross your fingers and pray the Thunderbolt has better battery life than the EVO. Otherwise you are going to end up with a charger in the office, one in the car, and two at your house just to keep the thing running when you want it.
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I would say it's more of an Evo "refresh" since it has a 2nd gen Snapdragon proc vs. 1st gen, 768 MBs RAM vs. 512 MBs, 8GB on-board storage and 32 GB SD card included (40 GB total) vs. 1 GB on-board storage and 8 GB SD card included (9 GB total) and a couple more minor improvements on design.

See here for a good comparison that elaborates on what I mentioned above. I would say it is actually something special since it spanks the Evo in every regard besides the display and battery life (though I haven't seen tests on life yet, I'm just assuming it'll be slightly better if anything). It's definitely going to be the fastest Verizon phone out right now maybe excluding the Fascinate/Galaxy S in gaming.

I'm definitely interested in this phone, mostly because I'm getting a little tired of my Droid. It's nice having 2.3.2 on it right now, but it still lags occasionally from just doing normal tasks. But I think I will prolly still hold out until the Bionic or Optimus x2 to decide. But if you're hurting for a phone right now, I definitely don't think you could go wrong with this phone.
 
bastage said:
Just reviewed its specs.. Sounds alot like the MyTouch I have had for quite some time.. Oh Wait I also have a FFC..

The atrix is the only exciting phone coming this month & after that it will be the HTC Pyramid. Everything else is just old news rehashed.
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Apparently the HTC Pyramid is suppose to have a 16MP camera......... wtf???
 
I'll probably end up getting this phone. Due in March for a new phone, and I need one bad. Sick of my enV touch, I need a real smartphone! Since the optimus 2x will probably only be 3G, I think I'll go with the thunderbolt for now. I'm guessing 4G will give me more of a benefit than a dual-core with 3G, but I dunno since this is my first smartphone.
 
Apparently the Thunderbolt has a horrible battery life, possibly why it's been delayed.

I wish HTC would of put a physical keyboard on the thing though.
 
TimG said:
I wish HTC would of put a physical keyboard on the thing though.
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I wish ANYONE (on Verizon) would put a damn keyboard on their phone now. The last decent one was the Droid 2/global and I don't see anymore on the horizon except maybe the Droid 3 that hardly anything has been leaked for yet. It's really the only thing that makes me hesitant to switch from my Droid.
 
T4rd said:
I wish ANYONE (on Verizon) would put a damn keyboard on their phone now. The last decent one was the Droid 2/global and I don't see anymore on the horizon except maybe the Droid 3 that hardly anything has been leaked for yet. It's really the only thing that makes me hesitant to switch from my Droid.
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It's becoming a smaller market due to things like Swype.
 
299.99? WTF best buy picked up the price by 50 more? I was so hyped for this phone on the 24th but their constant push back on it, im just going to go Iphone.
 
ocellaris said:
I wouldn't get too excited about the thing lasting 2 years. Its basically a Verizon version of the Evo 4G, and the Evo has been out for almost 9 months now. Only Verizon's marketing is allowing them to sell the phone for $299. Once the honeymoon is over and people realize the phone is nothing special the price will drop dramatically. Heck the Thunderbolt already looks old compared to the Atrix :D

Also cross your fingers and pray the Thunderbolt has better battery life than the EVO. Otherwise you are going to end up with a charger in the office, one in the car, and two at your house just to keep the thing running when you want it.
Click to expand...

Stop posting wrong info. Looks at the youtube reviews of the bolt. Its blowing the other phones away in quadrant. Evo posted a 1100 and bolt posted a 1950 score. Its an improved proccesor and has more ram. As well as runs on a significantly faster network.

The `marketing hype` is dual core for phones.
 
Zurginator said:
It's becoming a smaller market due to things like Swype.
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Yeah, I use Swype on my Droid all the time, a lot more so than my physical keyboard. But for longer messages/e-mails, it's definitely preferable to use the physical keyboard. It's also nice to use when you don't want half or the whole screen taken up by the keyboard and typing field. Plus it gives you something else to play games with, made even better with the Game Gripper.

mobusta1 said:
I didn't think there was even a market for physical keyboards anymore....
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How else are BB fans supposed to transition over? Or even heavy texters like my wife that requires a physical keyboard on any phone. I don't care how intuitive software keyboards get, I don't think it'll ever beat a nice physical keyboard, IMO.
 
coder_t2 said:
I'll probably end up getting this phone. Due in March for a new phone, and I need one bad. Sick of my enV touch, I need a real smartphone! Since the optimus 2x will probably only be 3G, I think I'll go with the thunderbolt for now. I'm guessing 4G will give me more of a benefit than a dual-core with 3G, but I dunno since this is my first smartphone.
Click to expand...

Dual-core is a gimmic right now, just like 64-bit was when it was first released. Yes it *technically* is better, but nobody is really writing software for it. In the future it will be important, but for now I'd go 4G instead (provided you live in a 4G service area)

Also, Re: Keyboards:
The only place I really hear a lot of complaining is Gaming because it's awkward to play a game and have on-screen controls for Emulators or any game that's not "point and click" interface (and I agree - it's a reason I bought a second Wii controller: to use as a bluetooth gamepad).
I used to be in the camp "it's faster for texting and email!" but I find my EVO in landscape is fine, and with autocorrect I usually make fewer mistakes. (the only thing I miss is the arrow keys for precision-selecting text, my finger easily misses the wrong letter when I'm trying to make a correction)
 
Best Buy's expensive. I don't know if the OS takes advantage of dual core cpu's or not, but the Optimus 2X is still faster than anything else right now including the Thunderbird.
 
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TimG said:
Apparently the Thunderbolt has a horrible battery life, possibly why it's been delayed.

I wish HTC would of put a physical keyboard on the thing though.
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ewwwwww....if you ever get a decent sized screen mobile with a fast processor and several onboard keyboards to choose from you be glad you no longer have to deal with a physical keyboard. this is coming from someone who used to say the same thing

DirtyB said:
Stop posting wrong info. Looks at the youtube reviews of the bolt. Its blowing the other phones away in quadrant. Evo posted a 1100 and bolt posted a 1950 score. Its an improved proccesor and has more ram. As well as runs on a significantly faster network.

The `marketing hype` is dual core for phones.
Click to expand...

1900 is nice but it only sounds "in line" with say, the Samsung Hummingbird found in the GalaxyS lineup.

to those saying it won't last that's preposterous. any of the phones in question will be plenty adequate for the next two years. the only reason one might feel the need to upgrade inside of two years is for ego.
 
nobody_here said:
ewwwwww....if you ever get a decent sized screen mobile with a fast processor and several onboard keyboards to choose from you be glad you no longer have to deal with a physical keyboard. this is coming from someone who used to say the same thing
Click to expand...

Nah, my Droid is plenty responsive on the 2.3 keyboard and Swype and I still prefer to have a physical keyboard on my phone. The HTC Merge seems like it will be a decent phone to have on Verizon soon just for the keyboard. I just remembered about this phone after posting earlier, so I'm glad there's still phones on the way with keyboards :).

nobody_here said:
1900 is nice but it only sounds "in line" with say, the Samsung Hummingbird found in the GalaxyS lineup.

to those saying it won't last that's preposterous. any of the phones in question will be plenty adequate for the next two years. the only reason one might feel the need to upgrade inside of two years is for ego.
Click to expand...

I agree, but you have to remember most people on here think "[H]" - as in if it's 6 months old, then it's too slow ;). I'm amazed I'm still really happy with my original Droid. Though it helps there's still a huge mod community for it so I can have plenty of ROM options for 2.3.2 ROMS.
 
there's no way I could go back to a physical keyboard now. with Swype and the stock Android keyboard.....when I have tried to use a physical again it hurts. I actually catch myself trying to touch screens that aren't touch these days....its a natural thing. keyboards are very 20th century
 
I want a phone with the same exact specs as the HTC Pyramid phone does for Verizon!


Nobody_here

megapixel ratings suck. the 5mp camera in the Samsung GalaxyS hardware runs circles around the 8mp camera found in the DroidX for instance.
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I agree completely. I have a Droid X and the 8 megapixel rating must not be accurate because I've seen way cheaper lower megapixel phones take way better pictures, period!
Very grainy looking to me.
 
nobody_here said:
ewwwwww....if you ever get a decent sized screen mobile with a fast processor and several onboard keyboards to choose from you be glad you no longer have to deal with a physical keyboard. this is coming from someone who used to say the same thing



1900 is nice but it only sounds "in line" with say, the Samsung Hummingbird found in the GalaxyS lineup.

to those saying it won't last that's preposterous. any of the phones in question will be plenty adequate for the next two years. the only reason one might feel the need to upgrade inside of two years is for ego.
Click to expand...

See, I'm on an Eris right now and I get so frustrated with the keyboard, and I'm even running it rooted with a 2.2.1 rom on it. I've tried Swype and there are some things I like about it and some things I absolutely hate.
 
nobody_here said:
to those saying it won't last that's preposterous. any of the phones in question will be plenty adequate for the next two years. the only reason one might feel the need to upgrade inside of two years is for ego.
Click to expand...

Look at any phone that launched around two years ago. Right now those phones are not looking so great, however when they launched people were always like "Wow this phone is amazing, it should easily last me a few years!". Talking about phones like the HTC Dream (G1), HTC Hero, Samsung Moment, original Droid (not close to 2 years old yet, but feels old), Motorola Cliq... This will be no different, by the time 24 months tick by, many new phones and new Android OS versions will have come and gone.
 
ocellaris said:
Look at any phone that launched around two years ago. Right now those phones are not looking so great, however when they launched people were always like "Wow this phone is amazing, it should easily last me a few years!". Talking about phones like the HTC Dream (G1), HTC Hero, Samsung Moment, original Droid (not close to 2 years old yet, but feels old), Motorola Cliq... This will be no different, by the time 24 months tick by, many new phones and new Android OS versions will have come and gone.
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i dont think it will be the same, consider that in the last two years we had a pretty much revolutionary jump from closed proprietary operating systems (yes im glaring at you Apple) to open source Android based handsets with 1Ghz+ processors and more memory than some desktops and purpose built GUI front ends for apps

sure, technology is going to make great strides. But I think any of the top tier Android and Windows 7 devices bought in the last year or so will continue to perform just fine a year later, assuming one is halfway through that 2 year cycle already if they bought a Droid X, DInc, EVO, GalaxyS, etc.....


TimG said:
See, I'm on an Eris right now and I get so frustrated with the keyboard, and I'm even running it rooted with a 2.2.1 rom on it. I've tried Swype and there are some things I like about it and some things I absolutely hate.
Click to expand...


the droid Eris is one of those phones that had terrible timing. Nice handset, and if it has been released a little earlier it would have been the go-to phone, but the flurry of other top tier higher spec'd devices that launched in the same time period or shortly thereafter eclipsed the Eris and it got no love after that...
 
TimG said:
Apparently the Thunderbolt has a horrible battery life, possibly why it's been delayed.

I wish HTC would of put a physical keyboard on the thing though.
Click to expand...

It was delayed to reduce returnes on the Iphone 4 . ;)
 
nobody_here said:
i dont think it will be the same, consider that in the last two years we had a pretty much revolutionary jump from closed proprietary operating systems (yes im glaring at you Apple) to open source Android based handsets with 1Ghz+ processors and more memory than some desktops and purpose built GUI front ends for apps

sure, technology is going to make great strides. But I think any of the top tier Android and Windows 7 devices bought in the last year or so will continue to perform just fine a year later, assuming one is halfway through that 2 year cycle already if they bought a Droid X, DInc, EVO, GalaxyS, etc.....
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I think the 1ghz processor will make a difference. When your talking about the phones of yesteryear, remember back then the MAX was usually 5XXmhz. This was a glass cieling for many years and phones still performed fine. I think the 1ghz phones will work well for 2 years...

But again, lets define "work" here. Will they still surf the net? Sure (unless some new net monster like Adobe Flash V2 or such comes out). Will they still send/recieve Email? Yep. Music? Videos? Yep Yep. All the Basics are gonna be fine!

But...

Will they work with the apps of tomorrow? This is what most people are questioning. For non-intense games like the everpopular Angry Birds, yes, most games in that vein will work fine. Now if somone were to port a graphics intense game to the phone (like in the past people ported Quake to painfully slow phones, mainly as a benchmark) then things start breaking down...

Will It work with AOSP 10.0? Agian, this remains to be seen, but overall there seem to be no major hangups with AOSP upgrades. Even older phones are handing cupcake and froyo with little difficulty, so it would seem safe to say the 1ghz phones will last for a while before the OS chokes them (and we can always stop upgrading if we're near the end of our contract anyway)
 
Ashton said:
I think the 1ghz processor will make a difference. When your talking about the phones of yesteryear, remember back then the MAX was usually 5XXmhz. This was a glass cieling for many years and phones still performed fine. I think the 1ghz phones will work well for 2 years...

But again, lets define "work" here. Will they still surf the net? Sure (unless some new net monster like Adobe Flash V2 or such comes out). Will they still send/recieve Email? Yep. Music? Videos? Yep Yep. All the Basics are gonna be fine!

But...

Will they work with the apps of tomorrow? This is what most people are questioning. For non-intense games like the everpopular Angry Birds, yes, most games in that vein will work fine. Now if somone were to port a graphics intense game to the phone (like in the past people ported Quake to painfully slow phones, mainly as a benchmark) then things start breaking down...

Will It work with AOSP 10.0? Agian, this remains to be seen, but overall there seem to be no major hangups with AOSP upgrades. Even older phones are handing cupcake and froyo with little difficulty, so it would seem safe to say the 1ghz phones will last for a while before the OS chokes them (and we can always stop upgrading if we're near the end of our contract anyway)
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Yeah I purchased my Fascinate when I did over the Droid X and DInc and whatnot because I researched the hardware. It has a more efficient and powerful processor and GPU than the other handsets. Today I am running a custom Superclean cooked Froyo ROM/kernel and AOSP is nearly ironed out for this device. The hardware actually got ahead of the software this past year. Manufacturers are playing catch-up now trying to support these devices that were really ahead of their time. I think they will be fine because of individual developers at XDA and such that can make it happen even when Sanding is failing at supporting their own device. My Fascinate is beyond what any stock Fascinate is because of their work. The hardware is not the problem, you will only be as limited as you allow yourself to be because for most devices the developers at XDA will blow away OEM ROMS.
 
wikidlad said:
Anyone else waiting for this?...Went into Best Buy today and spoke to a rep..placed a pre-order..28th is when he says he can let me pick it up.

Hate the idea of paying this much ($299) for a phone but I want it to last at least 2 years

We'll see
Click to expand...

Did you get the phone? It's still not available on verizon's website, so I'm wondering if they are filling pre-orders first.
 
coder_t2 said:
Did you get the phone? It's still not available on verizon's website, so I'm wondering if they are filling pre-orders first.
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Best buy likes to pull peoples leg and give out false info. I highly doubt anyone has their hands on one of these yet.
 
Nope, called in last night and the rep said that March 4th is when he will be able to fill pre-orders. I saw the schmackdown with the EVO...TB whooped it. fingers crossed its friday.
 
Let's hope it comes out on Friday. I even had Verizon tell me it's coming out on Feb. 28th. I'm due for a new phone next week and was hoping to get a 4G phone.
 
The President of Verizon anounced it that the Thunderbolt would be released on March 10 that means it will hit online on the 10th and stores between the 15th and the 20th. The announcment came at a JP Morgan Stock holders meeting.
 
Is the Netflix streaming app seriously only coming to Snapdragon phones..?! That's going to piss me off if I wait for the Bionic and it's not compatible with Netflix just because of its hardware, which is more capable. Why wouldn't they just make the DRM software dependent?!

It's not a deal breaker for me, but it would be a nice incentive to get this phone.
 
T4rd said:
Is the Netflix streaming app seriously only coming to Snapdragon phones..?! That's going to piss me off if I wait for the Bionic and it's not compatible with Netflix just because of its hardware, which is more capable. Why wouldn't they just make the DRM software dependent?!

It's not a deal breaker for me, but it would be a nice incentive to get this phone.
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I still have a hard time believing it's hardware preventing the DRM. In the end I think Android 2.2+ (if not 2.1+) is fine and anything after that is nothing but money changing hands in order to try to market themselves as better then the next guy.

I also think Netflix is full of shit when they talk about needing this to stop piracy. Piracy of what? A movie that streams to a 4 inch screen? Pirates already have BluRay rips by the time the movie gets to Netflix. They won't bother trying to pirate a mobile phone stream when they can just compress the BluRay down with Handbrake.
 
Vermillion said:
I still have a hard time believing it's hardware preventing the DRM. In the end I think Android 2.2+ (if not 2.1+) is fine and anything after that is nothing but money changing hands in order to try to market themselves as better then the next guy.

I also think Netflix is full of shit when they talk about needing this to stop piracy. Piracy of what? A movie that streams to a 4 inch screen? Pirates already have BluRay rips by the time the movie gets to Netflix. They won't bother trying to pirate a mobile phone stream when they can just compress the BluRay down with Handbrake.
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agreed 100%
 
Vermillion said:
I still have a hard time believing it's hardware preventing the DRM. In the end I think Android 2.2+ (if not 2.1+) is fine and anything after that is nothing but money changing hands in order to try to market themselves as better then the next guy.

I also think Netflix is full of shit when they talk about needing this to stop piracy. Piracy of what? A movie that streams to a 4 inch screen? Pirates already have BluRay rips by the time the movie gets to Netflix. They won't bother trying to pirate a mobile phone stream when they can just compress the BluRay down with Handbrake.
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I totally concur, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. If they try to block other phones from running their app, I'll bet xda guys will hack it and release the .apk to run on any other phone (if it even requires a hack to work). I'm hoping they just try to block non-snapdragon phones from seeing it in the market and leave it at that, so other phones can just get the .apk from another source and install it like that. I wouldn't think they'd make it that easy, but it'd be funny if it was.
 
T4rd said:
I totally concur, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. If they try to block other phones from running their app, I'll bet xda guys will hack it and release the .apk to run on any other phone (if it even requires a hack to work). I'm hoping they just try to block non-snapdragon phones from seeing it in the market and leave it at that, so other phones can just get the .apk from another source and install it like that. I wouldn't think they'd make it that easy, but it'd be funny if it was.
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They don't want people to code an app that just copies the videos right to the phone. Once they make a generic Android app that would just play anything on NetFlix on any Android device, it would open the flood gates. Even though its just a 4 inch screen, people would still try be copying the movies if they could. I mean heck, why stream the movie if you can just download "NetFlix Downloader" and rip the movies right to the SD card to watch them later?!?

Its mostly the studios that drive this, they don't want to have their content available on devices with little to no DRM.
 
ocellaris said:
They don't want people to code an app that just copies the videos right to the phone. Once they make a generic Android app that would just play anything on NetFlix on any Android device, it would open the flood gates. Even though its just a 4 inch screen, people would still try be copying the movies if they could. I mean heck, why stream the movie if you can just download "NetFlix Downloader" and rip the movies right to the SD card to watch them later?!?

Its mostly the studios that drive this, they don't want to have their content available on devices with little to no DRM.
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Very True. However, I personally woudl RATHER they let me copy the movie to view later since I dont have 24/7 4-bar >1mbps reception... I dont know why they cant use a DRM scheme like Napster To Go did (have the device "check in" with the server ever X days to renew the DRM key)

Yes I'm more than aware of the piracy aspect, but we all know this wont even put a dent on it. As somone said, by the time a movie arrives on netflix the pirates have a BD rip of it floating around somewhere...
 
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