If I told you I test-drove a Lamborghini Aventador, what features would you most want to hear about? The feel of the perforated leather steering wheel? The purr of the 700-horsepower, 6.5-liter V-12 engine? Or would you rather hear a poetic description of the gas in the tank and the highway I raced it on?
Indeed, the HTC ThunderBolt is an excellent piece of hardware. It's not quite the Lamborghini of the mobile phone world, but it certainly tops every other 4G device currently available from HTC, and it's the first phone to run on Verizon's 4G LTE network (That's the "highway," and don't worry, we'll get to that in a minute).
Unlike HTC's EVO or Inspire, the ThunderBolt's 8-megapixel camera sits flush against the back of the device. It's a perfect gesture of form and function, which vastly improves the feel of the phone, and also prevents the lens from scratching. There's also a front-facing camera for video chat. The optics are satisfying: The dual-LED flash was surprisingly effective, even in pitch dark. The 720p video quality and color saturation were solid.
The ThunderBolt's brushed metal kickstand is as well-constructed as it is practical: I used our ThunderBolt like a Chumby – to stream e-mail or RSS while working at a desktop. And the phone's vivid, oversized 4.3" WVGA TFT touchscreen was also fantastic for video playback.
Under the hood, too, the ThunderBolt is no slouch. The 1-GHz Snapdragon processor is zippy, to say the least. It comes loaded with Android 2.2 and with version 2.0 of HTC's own Sense user interface on top.
OK, so what about that highway? The ThunderBolt is the first phone to run on Verizon's 4G LTE, a network which – up until now – was reserved for laptop data cards or dongles. The short of it: LTE is really, really fast. While web-browsing, I experienced minimal clipping. Pages loaded, at times, in a matter of half-seconds. On average, downloading apps took about 10 seconds, literally.
