Does anyone have a Thunderbolt? Or even an opinion on them? I need a new cell phone for work. My manager says I can get a Thunderbolt, but I must decide by Monday morning. The other options are iPhone and some Droid model.
I purchased one last Saturday, I have no complaints whatsoever. If you are coming from something with extreme battery life (like my former blackberry) be prepared.
Overall after some tuning and rooting, I have absolutely zero complaints. Operating with my use levels I now get about 1.5 days out of the stock battery, this includes a bit of gaming and playing some scrabble(words with friends).
The Verizon 4LTE in my area (Phoenix) is astounding I am getting about 22 by 7.5 Megabits/sec with ping times under 200ms and my coverage is thus far 100% of the places I have been.
I will be glad to post any basic tuning tips should anyone like.
Aaron
1 Like
"My" Tbolt will actually belong to my employer and I've been told "no rooting". 
I'm sure you will like it, especially if provided by the company, after all, it's an Android phone. I assume it is running 2.2?
It does indeed come with 2.2.
I've told my manager to go ahead and get one for me. I do currently have a BlackBerry and I do enjoy the battery life. I guess I can get used to daily recharges.
I was sitting on the fence until I saw a trailer for the new Thor movie. Probably not a great reason to pick a phone... but nothing ventured nothing gained. 
That new Thor movie looks pretty cool, btw.
Back to the TBolt.... my manager said a friend of his thought it was too heavy. He wanted me to go to a store and hold one to be sure it was "light" enough. I just told him that I was not concerned about the weight because I wanted to get the ball rolling rather than go to a store and heft one. Eronysis, any comment about the weight of the phone?
My manager again commented about rooting and said I cannot root it while it is under warranty. So any thoughts about a safe way to void the warranty? 
It is not light that is for sure, i believe it is somewhere around 160G about 30 more an iphone 4. Personally it does not strike me as overtly heavy after a bit of use, I would assume this is due to its large size.
For myself this is perfectly acceptable due to the huge display and excellent video performance.
I would recommend asking to hold one with battery in at a Verizon store if you have any doubts.
A coworker just borrowed it in order to show the game of thrones trailer to his buddy while smoking outside...
---------- Post updated at 04:06 PM ---------- Previous update was at 04:01 PM ----------
I forgot to respond to warranty question.
I will ask a buddy of mine who happens to work for verizon;)
1 Like
I am posting via the THunderbolt now. Not super easy. 
Every smartphone of a new generation feels like the most complex machine ever built. After a week or 2 things start to make sense and idiosyncrasies are taken for granted.
I wouldn't agree with that. The iPhone (as Perderabo cited as an option) is anything but complex. In fact it's a phone I wish I had before wasting my time with other "Smart Phones", of which I've had a few.
My problem with posting via the Tbolt was the fact that a rather small screen was divided between a virtual keyboard and a window into a fragment of the web page. I will probably get better to typing on that "keyboard", but it's never going to be the same as a real keyboard.
At the top of this page I see a "You are somewhere around Fairfax" in the welcome box. At home it's "somewhere around Ashburn". On the Tbolt I got "You are somewhere around ." I guess I keep the same IP as I move around.
FWIW, the Samsung Galaxy S has a keyboarding system called "Swype" where you type by gliding your finger across the keyboard, not pressing down. I don't think HTC phones have this by default, but I'm not sure.
Recently there was a "texting competition" in the UK as I recall, and a woman with a Galaxy S who was using Swype won the contest and was proclaimed "the fastest texter alive" or something like that.
I think there is something similar for all Android phones as app if it is not available by default.
Note: Let's don't turn this thread into an Android v. iPhone discussion, thanks.
I wouldn't dream of it! I have absolutely no knowledge of Android and, thus, can say nothing against it.
But I was merely pointing out that the iPhone is easy and intuitive to use, and is not the "most complex machine ever built". I've posted here with it on a number of occasions, with no fan-fare. I can also sync my contacts, email and calendar from my company's Exchange server with it, which, as practicality goes, is quite useful.
Agreed and the same holds for my Galaxy S Android phone... it is certainly not the "most complex machine ever built"... but it is a bit tricky to type on small touch screen keyboard versus full keyboards, but I think this is true of just about all phones of the same screen size with a touch screen keyboard, isn't it?
Yes. Virtual keyboards are never a substitute for the real thing. It just doesn't feel natural, even on a tablet, with a "full-sized" keyboard. I can type much faster with two thumbs on my old iPaq than I can with two index fingers on the iPad! On a real keyboard, we tend to use most of our fingers to type. Funny that it's hard to touch type on a touch screen
I use swype on my Tbolt. The only issue I have encountered is having to long press on a text field and switch swype off and on again as input method in order to use automatic spacing. Note this is only once after a reboot.
Perderabo,
Your location updating and such may be a result of how often you are letting things like the weather service poll, if it is set to only poll when manually pressed the widget will not update often and sometimes read blank or nebulous information.
Cheers!
OBTW, you can download the Android 2.3 Gingerbread keyboard from the market and replace your 2.2 keyboard. I read it was an improvement, so I upgraded last night.
Excellent! Thank You Neo!
Well, even on my 2nd day I am doing much better than yesterday at typing. My biggest problem right now is that I can't find a holster for it. The weight issue that my manager heard about is just silly. It never would have occurred to me to comment about it. Just turning off some of the many apps that were running has pushed the battery life past 24 hours and I can live with that. Someone commented about complexity... I will need a few more days to get used to all of the features, but I don't see any needless complexity. And anyway... I like complexity. 
It's a big step up from my old blackberry and I think I'll keep it.