Thunderbolt vs Bionic

[Dj Carpenter]

Haha that was funny. But yeah, since pre-orders have started and accessories are shipping in, I couldn't be more than 2 weeks at most. Unless the iAss 4 is still making it delay.

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

My phone blows as well. Hell. I don't even have a smartphone and I HATE it lol.

 

[guitarchris123]

Great this phone blows. If I didn't need the money for selling it id take it out in a field and go office space on it....

Sent from my SCH-I500 using DroidForums App

Haha, I've thought about going "Office Space" in a field on my current phone many times over the past several months. I don't really need the little amount of money I'd get for selling it, so I've decided to go "Ted Nugent" on it after I get the ThunderBolt and do a little skeet shooting instead.

 

[Mwsr]

Haha awesome.. I think mines selling for around $250 used I def need that. I will definitely be going to check this phone out.

Sent from my SCH-I500 using DroidForums App

 

[SquireSCA]

In the end, it comes down to what you want.

Do you want unmatched performance and better battery savings (although currently in its unoptimized state the Bionic fails in this regard)? Do you prefer having a barebones experience that relies solely on your own efforts to maximize (assuming they even unlock the bootloader)? Get the Bionic.

Do you want a better user experience, complete with various consumer-oriented background services, a kickstand, and a powerful back speaker, from a manufacturer known for its speedy OS updates relative to the competition? Do you wish to be guaranteed to have the best of the best from a device that possesses the most mature technology of its kind (even if it means giving up next-gen)? Get the Thunderbolt.

Do you want both? Get the Thunderbolt then sell it later for a dual-core, DDR2 device later.

I'm going to one-year a T-Bolt and upgrade post-CES/MWC next year when devices are released that turn this year's Atrix and Bionic into Droid Erises. By then multi-core technologies will actually be utilized properly by the software so the jump in performance will be more noticeable and very welcome.

Again this is speculation. The phone is not finished yet. The Battery is better on dual core and when Honey comb is released it will work even better.. Weather you want to believe it or not the Thunderbolt is a upgraded Evo 4G with better Upgraded Sense Thunderbolt is old Tech. Dual sore is the Future. Whenever Bionic gets Honeycomb you will see the the real power of the Bionic. Don't get me wrong HTC Thunderbolt is a good phone but from what I heard from my friend from Verizon he told me to wait for the the Bionic it is a better phone... Also he told me if I can wait to 4th Q for the Verizon Atrix.. I am not waiting to the end of the year. So I will get the Bionic..

I think the point is that yes, when Honeycomb comes out for phones, the Bionic will be able to finally flex it's muscles. But by the time that happens, the Bionic's replacement will be out or about to come out, that will be even better.

There is something to be said about waiting for the software to catch up before you invest in the hardware. Because either the next generation of phones will be out, so that when you are finally able to take advantage of your Bionic, it will already be last year's hardware, or, the price on it will have dropped considerably because it is a 7 month old phone or whatever.

If you get the Bionic at launch, you will be paying top dollar for a technology that you cannot actually use, and by the time you can, there will be something better available for the same price you paid for the Bionic.

So my thought is to either wait until Honeycomb comes out before seeing what the dual-core landscape looks like, or, if you absolutely have to get a phone now and renew a 2 year contract, then get the Bionic...

This is like when dual-core CPU's first came out for the PC. WinXP wasn't really optimized for them, and very few games could take advantage of them. So you actually got better benchmark score and frame rates in games by having a faster single core, than the dual-core. It was not until a year or two later, that Quake4 released a dual-core patch that let it actually get the performance boost, but by then, the dual-core chip you bought the year or so before, was already outdated...

 

[guitarchris123]

I think the point is that yes, when Honeycomb comes out for phones, the Bionic will be able to finally flex it's muscles. But by the time that happens, the Bionic's replacement will be out or about to come out, that will be even better.

There is something to be said about waiting for the software to catch up before you invest in the hardware. Because either the next generation of phones will be out, so that when you are finally able to take advantage of your Bionic, it will already be last year's hardware, or, the price on it will have dropped considerably because it is a 7 month old phone or whatever.

If you get the Bionic at launch, you will be paying top dollar for a technology that you cannot actually use, and by the time you can, there will be something better available for the same price you paid for the Bionic.

So my thought is to either wait until Honeycomb comes out before seeing what the dual-core landscape looks like, or, if you absolutely have to get a phone now and renew a 2 year contract, then get the Bionic...

This is like when dual-core CPU's first came out for the PC. WinXP wasn't really optimized for them, and very few games could take advantage of them. So you actually got better benchmark score and frame rates in games by having a faster single core, than the dual-core. It was not until a year or two later, that Quake4 released a dual-core patch that let it actually get the performance boost, but by then, the dual-core chip you bought the year or so before, was already outdated...

Wow, finally somebody "gets it." Well said sir, this is what I have been trying to tell people for a while now.

 

[alboboy10]

How will the battery lives be on the two? This one is important. I don't like the evo much and a big reason is the battery. Battery life is important to me. Huge reason why I like the dx. Other than that the tb and bionic r both great phones.

Also will the tb have swype? I love it and wouldn't want a phone without it anymore.

 

[alboboy10]

Oh I forgot when 4g comes out will it bring addictional costs to the monthly bill for data or will it be the same price.

 

[guitarchris123]

How will the battery lives be on the two? This one is important. I don't like the evo much and a big reason is the battery. Battery life is important to me. Huge reason why I like the dx. Other than that the tb and bionic r both great phones.

Also will the tb have swype? I love it and wouldn't want a phone without it anymore.

The Bionic will definitely have the better battery life. It has a 1930 mAh, while the ThunderBolt unfortunately only has a 1400. Motorola typically has better battery life in general than HTC. Also, the dual core in the Bionic is supposed to help with battery life as well (by splitting up tasks so each core does not have to work as hard, or by keeping open programs running in the background on one core when not in use, so each core does not have to work as hard, I'm not precisely sure how this will work yet). The TB will not be terrible, but with high use you might not last a full day. The new second generation snapdragon processor and a smaller die (reduced from 65nm to 45nm) should give the TB improved battery life over the Incredible and EVO though. However, if this is a huge issue for you just buy the extended battery. I recommend Seidio.

Yes, the TB will have Swype pre-installed.

Oh I forgot when 4g comes out will it bring addictional costs to the monthly bill for data or will it be the same price.

The rumor right now is that there will be no extra charge for LTE service. At least at first, this is subject to change. I expect that once LTE service gets more widespread across the nation, they will start to charge extra for it. How much and the pricing structure is unknown by anyone, including Verizon.

 

[alboboy10]

How will the battery lives be on the two? This one is important. I don't like the evo much and a big reason is the battery. Battery life is important to me. Huge reason why I like the dx. Other than that the tb and bionic r both great phones.

Also will the tb have swype? I love it and wouldn't want a phone without it anymore.

The Bionic will definitely have the better battery life. It has a 1930 mAh, while the ThunderBolt unfortunately only has a 1400. Motorola typically has better battery life in general than HTC. Also, the dual core in the Bionic is supposed to help with battery life as well (by splitting up tasks so each core does not have to work as hard, or by keeping open programs running in the background on one core when not in use, so each core does not have to work as hard, I'm not precisely sure how this will work yet). The TB will not be terrible, but with high use you might not last a full day. The new second generation snapdragon processor and a smaller die (reduced from 65nm to 45nm) should give the TB improved battery life over the Incredible and EVO though. However, if this is a huge issue for you just buy the extended battery. I recommend Seidio.

Yes, the TB will have Swype pre-installed.

Oh I forgot when 4g comes out will it bring addictional costs to the monthly bill for data or will it be the same price.

The rumor right now is that there will be no extra charge for LTE service. At least at first, this is subject to change. I expect that once LTE service gets more widespread across the nation, they will start to charge extra for it. How much and the pricing structure is unknown by anyone, including Verizon.

Ahhhh ok thanks for clearing that up. The battery life might not be too great on it I'm assuming. :-/ I love droids and I have a DX now I would have liked to try the TB but idk the battery life is important to me because I use my phone a lot throughout the day and even the DX doesn't last as long as I would like it to (I know it's a smartphone but still)...and the Bionic is going to last very long I'm guessing since it's gonna come equipped with a huge battery and the dual core will probably reduce battery use at times. But like you said, you always have the option for a bigger battery, I just don't like getting things in addition after getting the phone.
The one thing that worries me is the dual core, it IS new technology so as great as it sounds who knows how it will perform...the snapdragon processor has proved itself to be the best out so I'm sure that won't change with the TB.

And charging extra for 4G would suck, knowing Verizon they're gonna make us pay $20 extra a month after it comes out which would suck.

My DX hasn't let me down and I love it, I would only change cause of the 4G (which is why i dont understand why anyone would get a Verizon iphone...lol) the rest of the specs as impressive as they are my dx already has them (except the front facing camera)...technology sucks honestly, I wish they would come out with phones every two years when your contract is up. It's not fair that 5 GREAT phones at least come out every 2 years.

 

[dll1477]

The Bionic will definitely have the better battery life. It has a 1930 mAh, while the ThunderBolt unfortunately only has a 1400.

I wish people would quit generalizing that car #1 can go further than car #2 just because it has a bigger fuel tank, without addressing the owner's driving habits and assumed fuel efficiencies of either. It is an assumtion that the Bionic will definately have better battery life -- it may be true, but but quoting this particular spec isn't the proof of it, unless there is proof that Bionic's hardware is just as efficient as the TB's

Motorola typically has better battery life in general than HTC.

This is a useful, generalization. The implication is that, historically, some combination of hardware choices and/or battery capacity results in a disadvantage to HTC, and that past performance guarentees future results when comparing two hardware platforms without testing either of them.

Also, the dual core in the Bionic is supposed to help with battery life as well

I wish people would quit generalizing that a dual-core processor from one mfg is guarenteed to be more energy efficient than single-core processor from another (especially while pointing out that the new Snapdraggon architecture has made energy efficiency improvements). There is the overhead in managing two cores which consumes energy, and the energy efficiency could be either better or worse, depending on the chip architecture and the running app(s). Of course, if someone has proven that in all use cases, the bionic runs just as efficiently as the TB, that would be different. But -- run the right app on the bionic and get both cores running full tilt, and its possible you will consume more energy per unit time than you would running the same app on the single core TB. In fact, the large, heavy battery on the Bionic is evidence to me that it's energy requirements could be large.

(by splitting up tasks so each core does not have to work as hard, or by keeping open programs running in the background on one core when not in use, so each core does not have to work as hard, I'm not precisely sure how this will work yet).

The warm start behavior may be a performance and user experience goal, but you could be right that it could be aimed at battery life as well. The suggestion that Bionic dual-core saves energy by running two cores at half throttle sounds fishy to me. Actually, benchmarks have yet to be shown, so there is still uncertainty because we dont have these phones out in the wild yet. Moreover, examples from the PC world suggest that efficiencies can be gained by shutting down one core while overclocking the other, thus saving some of the overhead required to manage the load across both. Is that a valid comparision for these two processors in these phones? we dont know yet.

The TB will not be terrible, but with high use you might not last a full day.

well this is true for a great many phones today, including some not-so-smart ones.

The new second generation snapdragon processor and a smaller die (reduced from 65nm to 45nm) should give the TB improved battery life over the Incredible and EVO though. However, if this is a huge issue for you just buy the extended battery. I recommend Seidio.

This is valuable and credible information, and evidence that the TB will make pretty good use of that 1400mA hr battery, but recognizes HTC's history and that out-of-box battery life may be a challenge for all-day operation.

The rumor right now is that there will be no extra charge for LTE service. At least at first, this is subject to change. I expect that once LTE service gets more widespread across the nation, they will start to charge extra for it. How much and the pricing structure is unknown by anyone, including Verizon.

nicely summarized. of all the VZW and BB reps I have talked too, about half give their opinion that there will be no change in the $30/mo unlimited plan for the TB. the other half recognize that they havent been told, cant say, and that the subject really is under further consideration at VZW. To me that give evidence that (1) the price is not going to do down, and (2) some chance exists that it might go up for 4G, with a surcharge perhaps, and that early-adoptors may be grandfathered.

[/QUOTE]

 

[guitarchris123]

Good points you made there. Thanks for breaking down my comments even further.

 

[darkmatter]

Tbolt has an fm tuner? I hadn't heard this before.

Would make it perfect for turning it into the centerpiece for in car entertainment center..I'm still trying to figure out how to make it work. (Seriously, why arent there android car stereos yet?)

 

[dll1477]

yes it has an FM tuner. cool huh. if you can hook up an mp3player to your stereo you can hook up the TB

 

[stinkass]

Newby here. Decided to trash my blackberry for either a TB or bionic.
Leaning towards the TB. I'm not sure why everyone thinks the dual core will have better battery life - when the apps kick in that use the dual core battery life will drop significantly, unless Moto throttles the CPU to cut power, which will negate the extra speed of the dual core (sorry, had to put in my 2 cents because of my harware engineering background)
Anyway, does anyone know for sure if you can tether a laptop to either phone and make a phonecall while the laptop is on the net? I have to do this for work and I didnt want to get a USB card for the laptop if I didnt have to. Thanks - some great discussions here.......