HTC thunderbolt

HTC Thunderbolt is the first phone in the United States which connects to Verizon’s lightening fast 4G LTE network. Because of this, the phone boasts of incredible download and uploads speeds. Along with this, several other specifications such as massive display, robust storage and great camera, makes Thunderbolt by HTC one of the top notch smartphones available in the market. Check out our exclusive HTC Thunderbolt review to know what the phone has in store for you.

With the same size display as EVO 4G, Thunderbolt boasts of a slicker and more modern look. The looks of the phone is quite pleasing and during close monitoring, we found that the looks of the phone is very much a mixture of Inspire 4G and Evo 4G. With Thunderbolt’s dimensions standing at 122x66x13 mm, the phone shares more or less the same dimensions as that of Motorola Droid Bionic (127.5 x 66.9 x 11 mm). It is however a tad heavier than Droid Bionic weighing 164 grams and the heavy weight makes its presence felt in your pocket.

The phone is made entirely out of plastic and the front of the device is mostly black while the battery cover boasts of a soft touch finish. The phone was quite comfortable to grip, but people with small hands might face a problem gripping the phone. The design of the phone is quite straight forward. The power button and the headphone jack is at the top while on the right side you get a volume rocker and the microUSB port.

Thunderbolt by HTC is equipped with a massive 4.3 inches display which displays 16M colors of resolution measuring 480×800 pixels. The large size of the screen gives you enough room to move your fingers round it while navigating websites or typing text. The colors displayed were quite sharp, clear and vivid and at the same time they looked more saturated with good contrast. The viewing angles were also good and because of the large size of the display we were able to read the texts pretty well. However, the performance of the screen deteriorated in direct sunlight and we faced some difficulties in reading the screen contents in direct sunlight. But sunlight legibility of Thunderbolt is better as compared to the screen of Motorola Droid X. The screen responded well to our touches and it comes with standard touch-sensitive buttons.

Though you have the option of Android market for downloading applications, Verizon and HTC has bundled Thunderbolt with several of its own applications. Some of the inbuilt apps in the phone are Rock Band and Let’s Golf too. With the Blockbuster app, you can download movies. With Kindle app you can read eBooks, OfficeOffice and TuneWiki. Some of the inbuilt Google apps in the phone are as follows

HTC Thunderbolt has been in the news because of its features. Let us talk about the OS and the UI of the phone. Thunderbolt runs on Android 2.2 (Froyo) and runs on the latest version of HTC Sense UI. You get seven homescreens to customize as well as HTC widgets such as Friendstream to keep tabs on your Facebook and Twitter buddies. You can see the home-screen with pinch gesture. There is a personalize button at the bottom right of the screen which allows you to choose several wallpapers and widgets. The phone allows you to store a large amount of data with 4GB of internal memory. The memory can be increased to 32GB. The 1GHz Scorpion CPU performs quite well in handling tasks and offer smooth navigation while playing games or browsing websites.

Thunderbolt is equipped with twin cameras. You get the primary 8MP camera and there is a secondary 1.3MP camera. The primary autofocus camera is equipped with dual LED flash and clicks pictures of resolution measuring 3264×2448 pixels. The camera does a fantastic job in clicking some sharp pictures with bright and crisp images. It offered plenty of details and the contrast and the brightness was quite good. Thanks to the dual LED flash, clicking photos in dim light was a pleasure and though the images in dark were a bit grainy, yet it was quite decent. The 1.3MP camera is quite good for carrying out video conferences.

The phone allows you to click videos up to 1280x720p resolution at 28 frames per second. When we watched the videos on our PC, then the colors looked very saturated and offered plenty of details. But sometimes the videos appeared to be a bit jerky even when we held the phone steady with both hands. Most of the videos were sharp and vivid and transition from dark to light surroundings was handled pretty well.

Thunderbolt will not let you down in terms of connectivity. Since the phone is one of the first handset to tap Verizon’s blazing fast 4G LTE network, you get to download pages at lightening fast speeds. We were able to download popular websites in just under 5 seconds. The phone however does not support GPRS, EDGE, but we did not complain about it because of the fast browsing speeds. You get Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Wi-Fi hotspot along with Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and EDR profiles. With 4G mobile Hotspot facility, you can connect as many as 8 devices to Thunderbolt via Wi-Fi. There is also a microUSB 2.0 and a 3.5mm audio jack to enhance you connectivity options. Many users have posted their experience on 4G speed on HTC Thunderbolt forum and we found most to them to be quite satisfied with the experience.

We were disappointed to find that Thunderbolt does not have an HDMI port just like Evo 4G. So you cannot stream videos and other contents to your television. However for wireless streaming, the phone does support DLNA.

Looking for drivers to upgrade the performance of your HTC Thunderbolt phone?  Click here to get drivers for your own HTC Thunderbolt. The link also provides you HTC Sync for Thunderbolt.

Want to give your Thunderbolt a desktop like structure? For this you need docking station which you can purchase from several online and retail stores. You can also purchase cases and covers for Thunderbolt to protect it from scratches for several retail stores.

The phone is equipped with a standard Li-Ion 1400 mAh battery which gives a talk time of approximately 6 hours.

During unboxing Thunderbolt, we found the phone to be equipped with the following accessories:

Release date for Thunderbolt has been sometimes in March 2011.

HTC Thunderbolt price in the USA is approximately $ 200 while price of the phone in India is approximately Rs 27,000.

HTC Thunderbolt gives a feeling that it is a solid piece of hardware. The phone’s ability to tap Verizon’s LTE network coupled with the design, camera and other features make Thunderbolt a great phone.

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