Today we shall be looking at the HTC Thunderbolt 4G, which is also known as the HTC Incredible HD or HTC Droid Thunderbolt for Verzion. Call it as you may, however, I shall only name it HTC Thunderbolt 4G in this review. This is a pretty good device, pretty powerful. Not half bad too, even by today’s standards. However, this is a 4G phone so it’s safe to say that it won’t run with just every network out there. However, be thankful that it’s a 4G device… I don’t think any Apple owner can say the same about their devices. Now 4G has its advantages and disadvantages. It has the advantage of being faster than most but it has the disadvantage of not being as spread around the world as the rest of the networks. Let us say that you want to use it in my country. It would be almost impossible to do so. But enough about that.
Let us begin this little review of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G.
GENERAL
In this part of the review we shall be looking at the more general features of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G. Things concerned here are the networks supported by the phone and the release date. The networks supported by the HTC Thunderbolt 4G are as following : CDMA 800 / 1900 as 2G networks, CDMA 2000 1xEV-DO as a 3G network and LTE 700 MHz Class 13 as the 4G network. The HTC Thunderbolt 4G was announced somewhere around January 2011, only to be released a few months after that in March 2011.
BODY
In this part of the review we shall be looking at the body of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G. Things concerned here are the dimensions and weight of the phone, as well as the existence of any marks that would distinguish the device and make it stand out from the crowd. This device doesn’t have any distinguishable items to it, however the dimensions and the weight are clear as day. The size of this phone is : 122 x 66 x 13 mm and the weight of it is around 164 grams. It also has touch sensitive controls since I doubt buttons can be dug that deep in the phone and on the back of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G, the Google sign can be removed in order to act as a support leg in case you choose to flip this phone and keep it as a small monitor to play movies or something like that.
DISPLAY
In this part of the review we shall be looking at the display of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G. Things concerned here are the type of screen, the size and quality and whether or not it has any protection or other features on it. The HTC Thunderbolt 4G has a TFT capacitive touchscreen with approximately 16 million colors. The size of the screen is around 4.3 inches and the resolution reached by this said screen is approximately 480 x 800 pixels. The pixel density of the display of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G is around 217 ppi. The HTC Thunderbolt 4G also has Multitouch and a few means of screen protection. The protection of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G is : Corning Gorilla Glass, so you know it’s a good one. Also, the HTC Thunderbolt 4G has the HTC Sense 2.0 UI pre-installed on it, should you choose to activate it.
SOUND
In this part of the review we shall be looking at the sound creating abilities of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G. Things concerned here are the alert types, the existence of a Loudspeaker or a 3.5 mm jack, as well as the existence of any means of sound enhancement. The HTC Thunderbolt 4G has all of those, actually. The alert types of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G are : vibration, WAV ringtones and MP3. The device has both a Loudspeaker and a 3.5 mm jack. Also, the HTC Thunderbolt 4G has DNSe on it ( Dolby Mobile Sound Enahncement ). That being said, this phone should ace any sound test it has to take.
MEMORY
In this part of the review we shall be looking at the memory of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G. Things concerned here are the internal storage space and possibilities of increasing it, as well as how much RAM memory the device has. The internal storage space of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G is around 4 GB, and if that isn’t enough know that upon purchasing this device you also get an included 32 GB MicroSD card, which also happens to be the biggest card recognized by the HTC Thunderbolt 4G’s card slot. Convenient, right ? Not so much, considering that this phone costs around 500 dollars. Well, price aside, the HTC Thunderbolt 4G also has quite a bit of RAM. It’s not 1 GB, but it’s close to it : 768 MB or RAM memory.
DATA CONNECTION
In this part of the review we shall be looking at the data connectivity of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G. Things concerned here are the GPRS and EDGE, the speed, the WLAN and the USB and Bluetooth connections. The HTC Thunderbolt 4G doesn’t have either GPRS nor EDGE, for some reasons. It’s speed isn’t that great either, being a Rev. A up to 3.1 MB/s LTE. The WLAN however is decent, being a Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with DLNA and Wi-Fi hotspot. The Bluetooth of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G is a Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP and EDR. The USB connection of this phone can be done via its MicroUSB v2.0 port.
CAMERA
In this part of the review we shall be looking at the camera of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G. Things concerned here are the main and secondary camera, their features and their capabilities. The main camera is an 8 MP snapper capable of photographing at around 3264 x 2448 pixels. It has the following features : autofocus, dual-LED flash, geo-tagging and face detection. The video recording ability of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G is limited to 720p. The secondary camera of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G is a 1.3 MP with nothing to its name.
BATTERY LIFE
This part of the review will be focused on the battery of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G. Things concerned here are the type of battery, the power outage and the time it can function and under what circumstances of the device. The HTC Thunderbolt 4G has a standard Li-Ion 1400 mAh battery capable of functioning for around 330 hours of stand-by time and around 6 hours and 30 minutes of talk time.
HARDWARE
The hardware part of the review of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G is what you can find here. Things concerned in this part are the processor, the mother board and the graphic card. The processor of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G is a 1 GHz Scorpion processor, which is “decent” even by today’s standards. The chipset and GPU are as following : Qualcomm MSM8655 Snapdragon and Adreno 205.
SOFTWARE
This part of the review is dedicated towards the operating system of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G. Things concerned in this part are the version of the operating system and the possibility of upgrading to a later version. The Android OS installed on the HTC Thunderbolt 4G is Android OS v2.2 Froyo and it can be easily upgraded to 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Actually, it’s recommended that you upgrade since the phone is one of the few older ones which support said version of OS.
FEATURES
This part is dedicated to the more general features of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G. Things concerned here are the capabilities and practical uses of the device. The HTC Thunderbolt 4G’s sensors are as following : accelerometer, proximity and compass. The messaging on this phone can be done via : SMS ( with threaded view ), MMS, E-Mail, Push Mail and IM. The browser of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G supports and uses both HTML and Adobe Flash. The HTC Thunderbolt 4G has a Stereo FM radio with RDS and a GPS with A-GPS support. Also, the HTC Thunderbolt 4G has Java via Java MIDP emulation. The only color available for the HTC Thunderbolt 4G is : black.
Here is a brief list of what the HTC Thunderbolt 4G can do :
- Video Skype & SNS integration
- Built-in kickstand
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- Google Search, Maps, Gmail
- YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa integration
- MP3/AAC+/WAV/WMA9 player
- DivX/Xvid/MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV9/player
- Organizer
- Document viewer
- Voice memo/dial/commands
- Predictive text input
This concludes the review of the HTC Thunderbolt 4G. If you feel that anything is lacking from this review feel free to leave your suggestion in the comments below for things which should be added and I shall be sure to take them into consideration when writing my future projects.
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