Hasta La Gadget!

LAS VEGAS — Another day at CES 2011, another 4G smartphone announcement. HTC debuted three new 4G mobile devices last week: the Thunderbolt, the Inspire and the EVO Shift.

Release date and price points on the Thunderbolt and the Inspire were murky. As in, HTC didn’t have any. But that’s been par for the course on a lot of smartphones announced at CES thus far. We do know the EVO Shift will be dropping Jan. 9, the last day of CES. All three phones will be running Android version 2.2 (Froyo).

I got to spend some time playing around with the Thunderbolt at the trade show. Here are a few first impressions, broken down by category:

Screen

It’s been a big year for big screens at CES, and the Thunderbolt doesn’t stray far from what’s been debuting. At 4.3 inches, it’s a sizable display equal to that of Motorola’s new Droid Bionic, last summer’s EVO 4G and the Thunderbolt’s sister product that debuted alongside it: the AT&T-carried Inspire.

All the advantages of such a large screen come through when using the back-facing 8-megapixel camera. It’s got a nice array of filters to tweak your photos, including the “vintage warm” filter (aka the Instagram effect). And sadly, I didn’t have anyone to video-chat with, but it’s nice to know I can, with the 1.3-megapixel front facing camera.

The haptic feedback on the Thunderbolt’s capacitive touchscreen is a nice touch, but I had a bit of difficulty with pressure sensitivity when trying to scroll through menu screens. On occasion I’d require a little extra effort to choose a widget. This was not a huge deal, but was still noticeable.

The sausage-fingered shopper need not worry. Where the spaciousness of the screen shines is in typing on the Thunderbolt’s keyboard. It’s easy to compose texts fairly quickly, and I made relatively few errors during test texts.

Browsing and Performance

We’ve been hearing lots about 4G network capability lately, and the Thunderbolt is HTC’s Verizon-carried contender. From the bit I did, the phone’s browsing speed is indeed ample. A quick Google search for Wired.com brought our site up in about five seconds. Scrolling downward on the page was fairly smooth, with only minimal clipping.

Under the hood, the Thunderbolt runs on a 1-GHz Snapdragon processor, with 768 MB of RAM and 8 GB of internal storage. It moved along through the menus speedily, and it pulled up video and pictures without much lag. There’s also a microSD card slot with a 32-GB card included.

Feel

The back of the Thunderbolt has a matte finish to it, somewhat akin to HTC’s unsuccessful Nexus One. With the Thunderbolt’s finish, it doesn’t seem like it would lend itself to slipping from the hand that easily.

The little Google-branded kickstand on the back is a nice flourish, especially when you want to watch video on the phone’s large screen. And the metal finish of the kickstand just looks cool.

Overall, I dug the Thunderbolt well enough upon first glance. We’ll have to see how it and Verizon’s 4G network perform when the phone is eventually launched.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

It may not have a dual-core processor, but the 4.3-inch HTC Thunderbolt is a beauty to behold — not to mention a speed demon with Verizon LTE on board. We just got our paws on the 1GHz Snapdragon-powered Android 2.2 handset at CES 2011, and immediately fired off packets in an online speedtest. While we’re not entirely certain Verizon’s building-penetrating 700Mhz frequencies would typically work deep in the heart of Las Vegas’ Venetian Hotel, it definitely did here, delivering nearly 18Mbps and loading full websites in a snap. The Desire HD-inspired hardware itself is no slouch either, with a solid if oh-so-slightly hollow build, a responsive glass touchpanel, and positively lovely colors from the 4.3-inch Super LCD screen — a coup for HTC in and of itself — and the strong, EVO 4G-like kickstand that hides the speakerphone is a nice touch. Here’s hoping Verizon doesn’t ask for internal organs or first-born children to turn this beast into an LTE hotspot. Find video after the break, and loads of pics below.

Myriam Joire and Darren Murph contributed heavily to this report.

Continue reading HTC Thunderbolt first hands-on (update: video!)

HTC Thunderbolt first hands-on (update: video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve here at Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE presser at CES, and we’re told our worlds will be changed forever in five minutes. Or something to that effect.

Continue reading Live from Verizon’s CES 2011 4G LTE press conference

Live from Verizon’s CES 2011 4G LTE press conference originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 15:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So yes, it’s looking about as confirmed as can be: thanks to a full-page ad in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, we’re finding out that the name of HTC’s first LTE phone for Verizon — and its first LTE phone regardless of carrier, actually — will definitely be “ThunderBolt.” This is the same phone that we’ve seen rumored and leaked over the last few months as the Mecha and the Droid Incredible HD, but we’ll admit — ThunderBolt seems like a pretty solid name for a phone that’s sporting a 4.3-inch display and some of the fastest data around.

Behind and to the right of the ThunderBolt, though, is another leak: the Inspire 4G for AT&T, though it’s unclear what “4G” means in this context exactly — AT&T’s in the same boat as T-Mobile right now where they’re topping out with HSPA+ and don’t have any LTE markets live, so it seems they might be borrowing a play from their smaller rival’s playbook and labeling the HSPA+ airwaves as straight-up 4G. We’re sad to see that trend start to snowball — but we’ll admit, T-Mobile kinda forced their hand on that one. At any rate, we’re pretty confident both of these suckers are going to get official here at CES this week, so keep your ear to the ground.

HTC ThunderBolt for Verizon and Inspire 4G for AT&T break cover courtesy of Rolling Stone ad originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Jan 2011 00:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So if the HTC Incredible was coded as the ADR6300 in Verizon’s internal systems, just what do you think an ADR6400 could signify? A pair of screenshots from a VZW employee living out a Julian Assange daydream have seemingly confirmed the common expectation that Verizon will very soon deliver its Incredible successor — better known to you and us as the LTE-equipped HTC Thunderbolt. Aiding and abetting the HTC handset in getting the red team’s LTE network started will be Samsung’s SCH-i520, an Android 2.2 device equipped with that most critical of accessories, a front-facing camera. Both are now standing on the precipice of showing up for sale, those zeroes in the stock column shouldn’t remain so round for much longer.

[Thanks, Andrew]

HTC Thunderbolt and Samsung i520 bring LTE gravitas to Verizon’s stock-keeping systems originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 01 Jan 2011 22:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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