General review, complaints, and info

[meepstone]

I am looking into getting the thunderbolt. I just have one concern. Will it play the games that are marketed as tegra2 games and also the playstation games that will come out soon? I dunno anything about the processors to compare them myself.

 

[X_TAC23]

The tb will be better for gaming due to the processor.

 

[meepstone]

Why is that? If you don't mind explaining the technical reason.

 

[guitarchris123]

The Thunderbolt will not be the best phone available for gaming, but it will be no slouch either. There are several other phones available right now that can beat it in terms of gaming graphics and speed. The Tegra2 games will be for phones like the Atrix and Bionic that have the dual core processors in them (the Thunderbolt is only single core). As for the Playstation games, there is a couple of PSone emulators in the market (FPse is thought to be better than psx4droid by most), but we will have to wait and see how they perform on the TB, nobody knows yet. It might not be fast enough for some and play them laggy or choppy, but not all games will perform the same so some may be ok. It should not have a problem with normal games from the market, or some of the other older emulators (NES, Sega Genesis, SNES, N64).

 

[funkyb]

It should not have a problem with normal games from the market, or some of the other older emulators (NES, Sega Genesis, SNES, N64).

fyi - PSOne is several years older than N64

 

[Natejka7273]

It should not have a problem with normal games from the market, or some of the other older emulators (NES, Sega Genesis, SNES, N64).

fyi - PSOne is several years older than N64

But N64 has always been easier to emulate for some reason. Probably because of the difference between cartridge games and disk based games.

 

[Shelooga]

its here. and its fast. blazingly fast as advertised. i came from two motorolas (need to update my sig) and i already prefer htc sense. i even axed go launcher for now to play. the sound is incredible, the speed is its best attribute. maybe all htcs are this customizable out of the box, but if not, this thing is loaded with options. havent tested voice+data, but while tethering for my friends laptop and my old droid x, i achieved speeds of 4.06 d/l and 29 u/l on speedtests app. i couldnt get those speeds on my overclocked x while nothing else was running. most of that im sure is the fact that maybe 100 people are sharing the 4g signal coming from the nearest tower. either way, its an upgrade. i heard rumors the camera wasnt as good as motorolas but my first impression is that it is better. im very happy with this.
now the bad parts...
4g cant be turned off in the system. extended controls doesnt work for this either altho all other toggles seem to. im sure this can be fixed
theres a ton of bloat. again, can be fixed eventually.
led light. from what i see, the color cannot be changed. also, 3rd party apps like handcent, will NOT let you turn the light to a steady glow. it seems it is only capable of blinking. possibly can be fixed im thinking
dialing ##program does not give you options to default to 2/3/4g. dead end
i booted into recovery. (power on, hold volume up) and now sometimes when i reboot the phone will freeze on the clouds after the thunderbolt strikes. in addtion, i think the 'fast boot' option chooses if it wants to work or not. i ran threee reboots and once it worked. also, it took my battery from 98 to 88 doing those three reboots, one of them being lightning fast. yikes.
also, the led (amberish colored) is behind the ear speaker screen making it even harder to see as it blinks for too quickly of a moment.
it feels great in my hand and now that i have the screen turned to 20%, im losing losing an increment of battery a minute <-- another +, 1% battery increments using extended controls.

all in all, im very happy. there are minor issues, but they almost all seem correctable. not by me of course, but some other brain.
still a lot more to mess with and play around with.

maybe someone can help me too. is there any way to reduce the number of screens htcs standard launcher uses? i use 2-3 and it has 7.

hopefully we get root soon and 4g becomes optional, along with the ability to change the length/color of the led light. these are my two biggest gripes so far




edit: also as a member of the beta team pointed out, screen sensitivity becomes an issue when charging. my old droid became super sensitive, my x was noraml, and this one loses sensitivity

 

[BigMcGuire]

Interesting review. I too have noticed the battery dropping pretty fast just by having it on. But I can keep this thing plugged in almost all of the time so that's good. I'm going to do a real battery test tomorrow and see how it does. I don't think it's going to match my 50+ hour rooted OG Droid tho (with medium use).

My old droid charger works and screen sensitivity seems to stay the same - just takes forever to charge. But that's ok. I just wish the charge cable wasn't in the way of me texting in portrait mode. Either way, all good.

 

[cereal killer]

Interesting review. I too have noticed the battery dropping pretty fast just by having it on. But I can keep this thing plugged in almost all of the time so that's good. I'm going to do a real battery test tomorrow and see how it does. I don't think it's going to match my 50+ hour rooted OG Droid tho (with medium use).

.

You may want to check this out and keep watching for updates to article.

HTC ThunderBolt Battery Time Revealed [Hands-On Test with SlashGear] | Android Community

 

[BigMcGuire]

Wow, that's amazing. I was hoping to get a little more use than that. That's pretty interesting. I've had the opportunity of talking to someone non-stop on ebuddy for 2 hours straight on my OG Droid and it used up almost half of the battery to a good 40%.

I'm not interested in getting a different back for this phone but I'd be interested in getting a bigger mAh battery.

 

[WorldOfJohnboy]

You may want to check this out and keep watching for updates to article.

HTC ThunderBolt Battery Time Revealed [Hands-On Test with SlashGear] | Android Community

That is really idiotic... why the hell would they have a 4" screen at 80% brightness? Dump it down to 20% and you will more than double the battery uptime... I did with my Pre-Prod TBolt.

 

[Shelooga]

thanks ck. ill look it over.

i have 100 usbs laying around so im good, its just nice to know i can play freely. im passing my 48+ hours-of-light-use-personally-themed-x down to jess. its breaking my heart. but i reinherit the og droid for some serious frankenstein work
im running at 20% brightness but obviously im using it so heavily that its draining quick no matter what. rooting and undervolting will change everything though so ill just be patient and charge ready for now

 

[jnashr]

Nice phone, but not so sure it is much of an upgrade from the X. So far the cons: slight hiss on my end when on calls, had to set up my ATT email manually, still have not been able to get my exchange email set up. Haven't had these issues on previous Android phones. Would also like an app for video calls.....otherwise the second camera is useless. Pros: form factor is great, feels really good in your hands, sense has some good eye candy.

 

[Parafly9]

Anyone else buy the car / window mount? The phone doesn't really sit in it flush and even more annoying is that stupid toggle on the top you have to snap down. I actually prefer my old OG Droid window mount.

 

[jkaod]

battery status?

OK, probably dumb question, but how do you check the battery status and what's been using it? Under settings, power I couldn't find any way to check it. My Droid has that right under the battery/power in settings.