HTC Thunderbolt User-Thoughts After One Month

[armeddroid]

Another Tbolt owner here.
Phone is awesome overall. No issues here. Meaning no reboots, no GPS issues(recently fixed) and its been great. My job is in a 4g area and its on constantly and does NOT kill my battery whereas my home is in 3g only. The only time my battery is killed is during the commute between work and home which is not a long trip. But with LTE ON/OFF, this is easily remedied.
I am not rooted yet but I dont really see a need to aside from getting bloatware off it.

 

[Limbwalker]

Thanks for the input. My wife's upgrade is coming soon and I'm thinking of getting her the TB . . . . dancedroid ​

 

[electric6]

tale of the blunderbolt

Ive griped all over this sight on my TB, but I guess I can do it here again for those considering wasting their money on it.

PROS:

1. Screen is almost perfect, full of color, and plenty bight. Pixel density is fine.
2. LTE is literally BLAZING fast. While in Houston, Austin, and San Antonio I regualarly achieved 19-21mpbs up/10mbps down.
3. Call quality is excellent, clear on both ends.
4. Speaker is nice and loud, even with my convert on it.
5. Love that its micro USB, so i can buy the cheap MOTO 5 buck chargers off amazon buy the box.
6. 32GB card is great, plenty of room for all my stuff.
7. UI is fantastic! Compared to the old 3gs I had, its like night and day. Smooth, customizable, and slick as butter.


CONS:

1. Screen is NOT viewable in sunlight.
2. Battery life, even with moderate use is very poor, stupid HTC should have included a larger battery than 1400mah.(get the HTC extended.)
3. Plastic construction unlike its siblings. I was hoping for the aluminum unibody like all the other HTC handsets this year. Its more fragile than it looks, ask asurion.
4. With the update my device reboots at least twice a day, knocking out 25% of power with each occurence. Beware the update, and keep a charger close at hand!
5. 768mb is not enough RAM. The device regularly slows to a crawl with any intense multi-tasking. Have tried both with and without tkiller, and its bad both ways.

(Here is where I say that google should make ram increase to 1gb standard for this year, then 1.5gb next and so on. Android devices could do sooo much more if they had enough ram to move with. They are simply capable of so much, its disheartening that this the cheapest thing to fix to really up the anty in perfermance - and all manufacturers just make phones with the bare minimum.)

6. OS is still buggy more often than I expected.

And the biggest gripe of all??

POOR SIGNAL STRENGTH AND RETENTION

Placing my phone next to multiple coworkers devices, my blunderbolt always, and yes i mean in decibal measurements, gets at least 25% worse signal strenth than any motorola big red device including:
OG Droid
Droid 2
Droid x

Hell, even this guy's blackberry flip gets way better signal than me.
There are places at my work I simply cannot recieve or place calls where all the other verizon phones can. I have called, and called, and called. No help here, SOL. Rebooted, restarted, wiped, Ive tried it all.

The Thunderbolt does not get as good of a signal as other verizon phones, and that is the reason I CANNOT recommend it for purchase. I do not live in a LTE area, and yes I know how to turn off 4g mode, and no it does not help. The update didnt help, and I doubt the MR2 update will help.

Finally, I will just say that based on specs this phone is better than other LTE phones they offer right now, but I cannot justify buying one because of the poor signal strength - which is the reason we buy these devices in the first place!

Ok, done flaming... *goes and hides in troll cave*

 

[guyinlaca]

Frankly, the Thunderbolt is disappointing after having a fully modded Droid X. Aside from 4G data speeds, the Droid X is better in most ways. I basically feel the Thunderbolt was Verizon's rushed out phone that is plagued with bugs, poor reception, poor call quality, and subpar battery.

My Droid X could go 36 hours on a single charge with moderate usage, whereas the Thunderbolt can only get 12 hours, and with heavy usage as low as 6 hours.

People who jump from the original Droid or Incredible might be impressed by the Thunderbolt, but many Droid X enthusiasts find this phone to be a downgrade in many respects.

I'm to the point where I either sell the Thunderbolt, trade it for a Droid Charge or go back to the Droid X.

 

[electric6]

Yeah, I hate to say it... But I think big red should have waited and just launched the tb on the new duel core platform that is recently been their trend - ie the EVO3d, and sensation handsets.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

 

[yakitori]

This thread has some misinformation. I got 18 hours on a charge. The os is not buggy. In fact its quite possibly one of the more polished feature rich ui on any android phone.

The dev support for this phone far exceeds that of any of the other new phones on vzw. The only issues i know of are battery life and reboots for some owners


ridin the lightning

 

[armeddroid]

People have to remember that this is a 4g phone and that the battery will drain more then one without it.
I personally have not received any OTA for the reboot or radio fix...etc. Thankfully I have no need for it cause out of box it worked fine aside the GPS issue which another DF member found a fix.
DX 3G vs a TBolt 4G battery? Cmon.
Yes it is disappointing that HTC didn't give a bigger battery but there are solutions to that. From what I read there has been many 'lemons' out there in regards to the TBolt which some members have been able to goto to VZ to get an exchange to resolve it.

via a Thunderbolt

 

[CadBane]

Wanted to like it, couldn't..

I'm never going to complain about a battery issue with a smartphone. After all, it is a smartphone and will require more juice. Especially a 4G. That being said, I was dissappointed with the Thunderbolt. (had one, currently back on droid 2 until fubar situation resolved.)

The reasons why I didn't like it. 1. Three resets in six days. I know Verizon's working on it, but still. 2. E-mail issues (AOL) An e-mail I recieved on a Saturday night/Sunday morning at around 1:30 am was still on my phone almost 12 hours later. This is despite the e-mail being read and replied to. 2a: It also failed to notify me of three unread e-mails. 2b: Received an e-mail Tuesday morning. Tried to open it, got a message claiming it was still on the server. 3. The gps was faulty. I could be at home, and it would display my weather from one location. Now despite me not having any other cities programed in, it would change my current location to somewhere 20 miles away from my house.

I'm not sure what phone I'll be upgrading to, but it won't be a Thunderbolt. As much as I wanted to like the screen, fast display, ability to customize screens with widgets, and a usable virtual qwerty (big for someone who's never used a total touchscreen phone before) the glitches make this one a non-starter for me.

 

[bendystrawboy]

thunderbolt does appear to have taken the reigns from the OG droid.

Like the droid, all of the tbolts issues are easily resolvable by anyone with an internet connection and desire to void their warranty.

My phone has reset since using the leaked radio.

and if you're having issues with AOL email? (is this 1997?) then you should probably use a blackberry...and also good luck rating photos on hot or not.

But seriously, if you're a normal consumer you should understand that if you buy a lte phone you are basically a beta tester and currently the tbolt you receive from VZW is going to be awful, i seriously don't understand how VZW allows this phone to be sold as is. No one should be sold a new phone that reboots 20 times a day.

 

[CadBane]

I'm not one of those people.

thunderbolt does appear to have taken the reigns from the OG droid.

Like the droid, all of the tbolts issues are easily resolvable by anyone with an internet connection and desire to void their warranty.

My phone has reset since using the leaked radio.

and if you're having issues with AOL email? (is this 1997?) then you should probably use a blackberry...and also good luck rating photos on hot or not.

But seriously, if you're a normal consumer you should understand that if you buy a lte phone you are basically a beta tester and currently the tbolt you receive from VZW is going to be awful, i seriously don't understand how VZW allows this phone to be sold as is. No one should be sold a new phone that reboots 20 times a day.

1. The AOL e-mail is for my small business. I hate Verzion's selection of Blackberrys. Have thought about buying my way out contract, but my work carries me to a lot of areas where Verizon has coverage and AT&T doesn't.

2. I'm probably not a normal consumer in terms of usage. Do understand that new technology isn't always perfect. Matter of fact, if the resets were the only issue, I'd likely still have my TBolt. But the other issues plus the resets make this phone a non-starter for me.

3. No, I don't care to void my warrinty. And if I have to do it to fix a problem, that means it's not worth my time. (as an aside, it's a reason why I'm very hesistant to even consider an IPhone because of having to jailbreak in order to run certain apps I'd be interested in.)

4. On that we agree. A phone that restarts mulitple times should not be released. Sometimes the rush to be "first" means cutting corners in the process. :icon_evil:

 

[_33]

Stock, I was close to returning this thing. I almost felt like someone robbed me.

After rooting and running a few ROM's, the phone was ok. I was content, but not happy.


After loading CM7, the device is perfect. I love vanilla Android. I did like a couple of things Sense had to offer, but I've found equal, if not better, replacements.


I leave 4g off, unless downloading a big file or tethering. 3g is around 3mb's, so it's more than fast enough to run all of my apps. I'm getting more than a day, using wifi at home.


I have no signal, gps or battery issues now.


My only con would be that I had to root it and run CM7 to make this thing fly. Best phone ever.

This isn't a cherry picked screen shot. I got pretty much the same results each time. I don't normally run the phone without an overnight charge.

 

[etx_droid]

I love my TB and I haven't rooted yet. I've had a few reboots here and there but it isn't terrible. I'm not in 4G so battery life is good, and I don't see how folks turn off 4G just to get better battery life...Speed>battery life IMO. The fact that dev support is so great is what made me get the TB because I know if I do get unhappy, I'll be able to mod it the way I want.

RAM is great for me, one of the snappiest devices I've used. The TB is a very worthy upgrade from my OG and like yakitori said, seems like there is some bad info in here. Go test one out yourself before you listen to others...that's what I did and I couldn't be happier. And I'm proud of myself, it's been 2 weeks and I haven't rooted dunno how much longer I can last lol

 

[wesdo2gg]

I couldn't be happier with my Thunderbolt. I came from a DX, which I was not satisfied with. However, my TB has been working flawless since the day I got it. I've now went S-Off and using Adernerlyn (sp) Control Freak kernel with Thunderrom. I EASILY get a day out of charge and I'm a moderate to heavy user. This phone is easily the best I've ever owned.

 

[FrellingFrakker]

I love my TBolt and my battery life hasn't been bad at all. I get 15 - 20 hours on 3g and 8 - 12 on 4g. I also don't have the random reboots (yes, I installed the OTA) so I guess I'm one of the lucky ones.

 

[FrellingFrakker]

This thread has some misinformation. I got 18 hours on a charge. The os is not buggy. In fact its quite possibly one of the more polished feature rich ui on any android phone.

The dev support for this phone far exceeds that of any of the other new phones on vzw. The only issues i know of are battery life and reboots for some owners


ridin the lightning

+1 - lots of misinformation