The HTC ThunderBolt is the first 4G LTE

3GPP Long Term Evolution

3GPP Long Term Evolution, usually referred to as LTE, is a standard for wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals. It is based on the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA network technologies, increasing the capacity and speed using new modulation techniques...

 smartphone

Smartphone

A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...

 on the Verizon Wireless

Verizon Wireless

Cellco Partnership, doing business as Verizon Wireless, is one of the largest mobile network operators in the United States. The network has 107.7 million subscribers as of 2011, making it the largest wireless service provider in America....

 network. It is a CDMA/LTE variant of the HTC Desire HD

HTC Desire HD

The HTC Desire HD is an Android smartphone by HTC Corporation. It was unveiled at a press event in London hosted by HTC on September 15, 2010, and was made available for sale in October in Europe and in January 2011 in Canada...

. It was first announced at CES on January 6, 2011.

In addition to 4G service, the ThunderBolt is the first Verizon phone to support simultaneous voice/data over 3G without the help of Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...

.

Launch

The phone was launched March 17, 2011. Best Buy was the first retailer to offer a pre-order on February 6, 2011. Wirefly and Amazon both allowed pre-orders a few days before the device was officially launched. This launch date, however, was much later than anticipated by consumers, frustrating many potential buyers.

There was so much pent-up demand for the ThunderBolt that it broke pre-sale records for at least one online vendor.

However, despite early demand for the phone, HTC has appeared to struggle in their attempts to address multiple complaints about the device. Some features were removed just prior to release, such as a built-in Skype app with video calling capability. Common reported issues include complaints of short battery life, frequent rebooting, and a much delayed and troubled rollout of an update to the Android Gingerbread platform.

Hardware

The ThunderBolt has a second generation 1Ghz Snapdragon processor manufactured by Qualcomm

Qualcomm

Qualcomm is an American global telecommunication corporation that designs, manufactures and markets digital wireless telecommunications products and services based on its code division multiple access technology and other technologies. Headquartered in San Diego, CA, USA...

, and runs on Verizon's 4G LTE Network. It runs Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread, with the custom HTC Sense

HTC Sense

HTC Sense is a graphical user interface developed by HTC Corporation for mobile devices running Android, Brew and Windows Mobile.Based on the TouchFLO 3D design, HTC has referred to HTC Sense as both a user interface in itself and also as a user experience layer on top of TouchFLO 3D.Announced June...

 2.1 skin as the user interface. It has a 4.3-inch class (480×800) WVGA TFT capacitive touchscreen

Touchscreen

A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touching the display of the device with a finger or hand. Touchscreens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus...

 covered by Gorilla Glass

Gorilla Glass

Gorilla Glass, manufactured by Corning, is an alkali-aluminosilicate thin sheet glass engineered specifically to be thin, light and damage-resistant. Its primary application is portable electronic devices with screens, such as mobile phones, portable media players, and laptop displays...

, a special crack and scratch resistant material made by Corning. Two cameras are included; an 8 megapixel rear-facing camera, able to record 720p video, with a dual-LED flash, and a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera. The phone has 768 MB of RAM and 8 GB of eMMC of internal flash memory data storage. An external microSDHC card slot supports up to 32 GB more storage memory, which comes preinstalled. The ThunderBolt also comes with a kickstand that works in landscape and portrait positions for photo or video viewing. An LED notification light is located near the earpiece.

Network

The ThunderBolt runs on Verizon's 4G LTE network which provides download speeds of 5-12 Mbps, and upload speeds of 2-5 Mbps. 4G coverage includes 178 markets, and 111 airports in the US. By the end of 2011, Verizon claims that the 4G service will be in more than 185 markets. The ThunderBolt is the first phone on Verizon's network that uses a physical SIM card, versus MEID

MEID

A mobile equipment identifier is a globally unique number identifying a physical piece of CDMA mobile station equipment. The number format is defined by the but in practical terms it can be seen as an IMEI but with hexadecimal digits....

 or ESN

Electronic Serial Number

Electronic serial numbers were created by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to uniquely identify mobile devices, from the days of AMPS in the United States from the early 1980s. The administrative role was taken over by the Telecommunications Industry Association in 1997 and is still...

, for device authentication.

External links

• HTC ThunderBolt review by PhoneArena