Hasta La Gadget!

At a quick glance, without any background information, your eyes might tell you that the HTC Thunderbolt is little more than a Verizon remake of Sprint’s EVO 4G and AT&T’s Inspire 4G. After all — like its contemporaries — the Thunderbolt features a spacious 4.3-inch WVGA display, 8 megapixel camera, and dual-LED flash. In reality, though, the Thunderbolt is something more: from the Inspire, it borrows a better, crisper display with a wider viewing angle and a newer-generation (though still single-core) Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. From the EVO 4G, meanwhile, it borrows a cool integrated kickstand and the addition of a second “4G” radio, making this a spec Frankenstein of sorts — the best of both worlds. Of course, instead of Sprint’s WiMAX for that 4G radio, the Thunderbolt grants you access to Verizon’s LTE network — a network so fresh, it still has that new-network smell. There’s a lot of horsepower here.

In other words, the Thunderbolt has a very real opportunity to be the finest 4.3-inch device HTC has ever made — for the moment, anyway. Let’s see how it fares.

Continue reading HTC Thunderbolt review

HTC Thunderbolt review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Another saga put to rest. The question of just when Verizon will release its first 4G LTE handset was answered yesterday with the word “tomorrow,” which makes today that day! Verizon Wireless is now taking online orders for HTC’s 4.3-inch Thunderbolt, pricing the LTE lubber at $250 on a two-year contract. It comes with Android 2.2 as the OS underlying the HTC Sense 2.0 UI, an 8 megapixel camera with HD video recording, 768MB of RAM, and a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 chip that will have to do its best to keep up with those crazy 4G download speeds. If Verizon’s own pricing feels a bit rich to you, shop around — we’ve found the Thunderbolt as low as $180 at Amazon, although the online retailer has it on back order for the moment.

[Thanks, Justin]

Continue reading HTC Thunderbolt now available to buy: $250 from Verizon, $180 at Amazon

HTC Thunderbolt now available to buy: $250 from Verizon, $180 at Amazon originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Mar 2011 04:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The +YvesBehar phone shuns the touchscreen trend

Yves Behar-Designed Cellphone Gets Its Design Inspiration From European Watches
If you want to trade in your touchscreen-centric smartphone for a dumphone that’s not short on looks, you can’t go wrong with Yves Behar’s +YvesBehar phone. Swiss and French watchmakers developed the watch band-inspired metalwork, which is available in either stainless steel or gold. Those slick looks come at a price though: It’ll cost 7,000 euros when it debuts this spring.

Yves Behar Desings a Sleek Handset [Gizmodo]

Eminent Planning an Android HD Media Player
The EM7297 hdMEDIA AND, which will run an unspecified version of Android, will let you play HD movies and Android apps on your HDTV. It’ll support USB 3.0, Flash 10, Gigabit LAN, and OpenGL. It’s unclear if regular apps or only specifically built Android applications will be able to run on the set top box, but it could be a nice option for fans of Google’s OS when it debuts.

Eminent to Develop HD Media Player with Android [Eminent via Geeky Gadgets]

HTC Thunderbolt Coming March 17, According to Tweet
A regional sales manager for HTC accidentally tweeted that Verizon’s first 4G LTE smartphone, the HTC Thunderbolt, will arrive March 17th. This date lines up with previous rumors and expectations. The tweet, by Imran Shahid, was quickly deleted.

HTC Rep Confirms Thunderbolt Launch Date [Droid Life]

AT&T Will Begin Capping DSL and U-Verse Internet In May
In a move purported to only affect “less than 2 percent of [their] Internet customers”, AT&T will begin capping their Internet services May 2nd. Landline DSL subscribers will have a 150GB cap; U-Verse customers will have a 250GB. For every additional 50GB of data used, a $10 overage fee will be charged, following a 2 strikes and you’re out rule—the third month you go over, you’ll get slapped with the fee. An online tool will let you monitor your usage and send out an alert when you reach certain percentages of your monthly allowance. Apparently, the top 2% of their subscribers use 20% of their network’s bandwidth—equal to the usage of “19 typical households.” AT&T will begin notifying customers of the change this week.

AT&T Will Cap DSL and U-Verse Internet [Engadget]

Recharge Old Alkaline Batteries with the Wattsclever Alkaline Battery Charger
The Wattsclever Alkaline Battery Charger can charge up 4 of your old batteries in 4 hours. A microcontroller checks that they won’t overheat and die. It’s made of recyclable material, and promises to recharge standard alkaline batteries up to 20 times, so if you find yourself constantly throwing those suckers away, a $46 investment in this gadget could pay off.

Alkaline Battery Charger [Wattsclever via Red Ferret]

Well, it looks like the seemingly unending saga of the HTC Thunderbolt launch could really, finally be drawing to a close. Following up a fairly solid hint earlier today, we now have some actual tangible evidence that the 4G-equipped smartphone will indeed be launching on Thursday, March 17th courtesy of some helpful tipsters. Of course, that’s still not completely official, but HTC has promised that an announcement is coming “soon,” so we should be hearing more from both it and Verizon any day (or moment) now if it the 17th really is the launch date. One more shot after the break.

Continue reading HTC Thunderbolt tipped to launch March 17th, again

HTC Thunderbolt tipped to launch March 17th, again originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lightning, a close relation of Thunderbolt. Photo Thomas Bresson / Flickr

Canon may soon be firing Thunderbolts from its cameras, according to a statement by the boss of Canon’s Video Products Group, Hiroo Edakubo. The press statement is the usual vapid fluff, but is pretty concrete when it comes to Canon’s intentions:

We are excited about Thunderbolt technology and feel it will bring new levels of performance and simplicity to the video creation market.

Thunderbolt is perfect for video, and especially the kind of high-end video market Canon caters to. Using the super high-speed connection, you could hook a camera through a RAID drive and into a monitor, neatly daisy-chained all along the way. And if you opt for the optical option, coming in the future, then you can use crazy long cables to make hooking up gear even easier. Thunderbolt on camcorders makes perfect sense.

But does this mean we’ll get Thunderbolt on our SLRs? Not necessarily. Canon and Sony, both of whom make still and video devices, have long used FireWire for video cameras and USB for stills cameras. This is unlikely to change until Thunderbolt becomes as ubiquitous as USB. After all, sensor sizes (and therefore file sizes) aren’t getting much bigger these days, and no manufacturer want to hobble their hardware by making it compatible with only a few computers.

On the other hand, I think we can expect Thunderbolt SD and CF card readers very soon. Imagine having your entire 8GB photo-shoot slurped into your computer in a few seconds. Yes please.

Chip Shot: Canon Signals Support for Intel Thunderbolt Technology [Intel]

See Also:

• Lacie's Little Big Drive Shows Thunderbolt Is Great for Storage …
• How Thunderbolt Could Hook Up Notebooks With Powerful Peripherals …
• New MacBooks Get Faster Chips, Thunderbolt Port
• New MacBooks Torn Open, Thunderbolt Chip Revealed