Thunderbolt vs Bionic

[electric6]

Here's a list of advantages/disadvantages the Thunderbolt has over the Bionic:

Thunderbolt has more RAM: 756 compared to Bionic's 512.

Thunderbolt has a Kickstand - and contrary to popular belief, you CAN charge it while using it, because the Kickstand also lets you stand the phone upright.

Thunderbolt has a 32GB microSD card pre-installed, Bionic doesn't have one.

Thunderbolt can handle data and voice over 3G/4G, Bionic can't

Thunderbolt has a built-in FM radio (Not sure if there's an app for this, but hey).

Thunderbolt has an external speaker; Bionic doesn't.

Thunderbolt has DLNA connectivity, Bionic doesn't (to my knowledge)

RUMORS:

Thunderbolt will have an unlocked bootloader, Bionic will almost certainly have a locked one

Thunderbolt will have a device that allows connecting to non-DLNA enabled TV's, while the Bionic can only be connected to HDMI-enabled TV's.

DROID BIONIC Advantages over Thunderbolt:

Dual-Core Tegra 2 Processor, both clocked at 1GHz (Although according to this video: YouTube - HTC Thunderbolt Unboxing and Demonstration , the Thunderbolt is still faster).

DDR2 RAM instead of regular (I think DDR2 RAM reads/writes faster).

More built-in memory (16GB's compared to the Thunderbolt's 8GB's, although the BIONIC doesn't have a microSD pre-installed, so the Thunderbolt will still have more memory out of the box at 40GBs).

This is still speculation on the Bionic end. No real specs have been released yet.. The phone is not finished yet. 512MB DDR2 Ram is faster then 756MB Ram. I have not heard that the Thunderbolt being DDR2. Motorola always comes with Micro SD Card installed so we just have to wait and see will it be 16G or 32G if it comes with 32G Micro SD then that is 48Gs the Bionic will have. Yes the front facing Camera is better then the Bionic's. But really how many of us is going to use it all the time. especially if your friends do not have the front facing camera.. All I am saying is wait until Motorola releases the full specs before speculating. I am one who do not care if my phone is locked or not.. I do not root my phones

I wanted to clear a few of these things up:

RAM - TB has more RAM (regular, not DDR2), while Bionic has better RAM (DDR2, reads/writes twice as fast as regular). It remains to be seen who will come out on top on that issue (space vs. speed).

FFC - Bolt is clear winner here, Bionic will have blurry video-chat, but how many people will really use it very often? And it won't even matter at all if you don't know anyone else with a FFC phone yet.

Kickstand - sure you can charge while video-chatting, but what about while watching a video? Nope. I guess HTC somehow thought video chat functionality was more important than watching videos/movies.

MicroSD card - the X came with a 16gig, so I imagine the Bionic will too. Still, that leaves the TB with 40 gig out of the box and the Bionic with 32.

Simultaneous talk/data - this feature will be possible on the TB, but not a selling point (according to internal documents) because users will not get the same quality Verizon experience while using it (which makes me think it will be a little sketchy at times). Also, it remains to be seen whether the Bionic will have this or not. It has not been rumored yet, but it is certainly possible.

FM radio - while the Bionic is not rumored to have one yet, the X had one so I'm confident the Bionic will too.

External speaker - the TB's will be big and probably louder and sound better, but the Bionic will still have a speaker (just not as visible and big as the TB's)

DLNA - the X had DLNA, so I suspect the Bionic will too. Its probably just becoming a standard feature on Moto phones, so not listed in early spec sheets yet. Thus, it will most likely be able to do both DLNA and HDMI.

Bootloader - both phones will have "locked" bootloaders, but the Bolt will get permanent root from the developer community, while the Bionic will not. This makes the HTC phone much more "hacker-friendly." This only becomes an issue if you want to root and put custom roms on your phone, etc. If you are not into that techy stuff, then this is a non-issue.

Clocking/cores - the Bolt beat each core individually of the Bionic, but putting the two together, the Bionic has a higher total quadrant score. What does this mean? Not much, quadrant scores are easily manipulable. The OS on the Bionic and Android software itself are not optimized for dual core yet, so there will be very little advantage in having dual core for a while (except maybe gaming?). Maybe by the fall or winter they will be able to utilize dual core better, and have apps that can take advantage.

bionic also will have that same tall skinny lcd that the X has, which to me is VERY uncomtorable to type on in portrait model. Yes, its better for watching movies(esp with having more pixels in 16:9) but Im not gonna be watching any movies on a 4.3" screen as the anguish and squinting just aint worth my time. The evo/deseire hd/TB has a much more typing friendly screen, and IMHO makes the device look much more balanced. And the dual core would be nice in the TB, but i suspect we wont see that until feburary of next year(qualcomm loves to delay everything), and its really only useful for gaming anyways...

 

[BlackOtaku]

Bionic for me. When it comes down to it, I'm gonna have whatever phone I get for the next two years. I want it to be as up-to-modern specs as possible, and the single core CPU of the TBolt just won't cut it. Plus I'm not a big fan of the Thunderbolt's design. Or Sense.

 

[Forgetful]

Bionic for me. When it comes down to it, I'm gonna have whatever phone I get for the next two years. I want it to be as up-to-modern specs as possible, and the vEVO just won't cut it. Plus I'm not a big fan of the Thunderbolt's design. Or Sense.

For the last time, this is not true.

 

[BlackOtaku]

Bionic for me. When it comes down to it, I'm gonna have whatever phone I get for the next two years. I want it to be as up-to-modern specs as possible, and the vEVO just won't cut it. Plus I'm not a big fan of the Thunderbolt's design. Or Sense.

For the last time, this is not true.

Forgive my ignorance, I looked back at the specs and compared them once you mentioned it. The TBolt is an improvement over the EVO, and I will retract my 'vEVO' comment.

Still, it's not enough. The RAM is there, but the CPU is more important (to me, at least). It is however, still a damn nice phone.

 

[leonozug]

Bionic for me. When it comes down to it, I'm gonna have whatever phone I get for the next two years. I want it to be as up-to-modern specs as possible, and the vEVO just won't cut it. Plus I'm not a big fan of the Thunderbolt's design. Or Sense.

For the last time, this is not true.

Yes, the Thunderbolt is better than an EVO, way faster. Better processor. And Sense is way, way better than Motoblur...it works and looks beautiful, unlike Blur.

Also, everything the Bionic runs is going to have to be completely re-written for it to work properly with Android. If you look at a Quadrant someone posted on the Bionic, it said "Cores: 1"...the Bionic was only running on one. It will be a while before the Bionic can run up to it's potential of dual-core, I think next spring at this time will be a better time for a new dual-core phone offering. The Thunderbolt is polished and proven ala the Desire HD. I mean, the thing is running almost 2000 in the quadrant stock. Isn't that fast enough? lol

 

[Forgetful]

Bionic for me. When it comes down to it, I'm gonna have whatever phone I get for the next two years. I want it to be as up-to-modern specs as possible, and the vEVO just won't cut it. Plus I'm not a big fan of the Thunderbolt's design. Or Sense.

For the last time, this is not true.

Forgive my ignorance, I looked back at the specs and compared them once you mentioned it. The TBolt is an improvement over the EVO, and I will retract my 'vEVO' comment.

Still, it's not enough. The RAM is there, but the CPU is more important (to me, at least). It is however, still a damn nice phone.

If only HTC did something about their stupid batteries...
Initial reports of VZN employees are favorable for the snap dragon.
Of course the future is T2,T3,T4 processors.

 

[Haloman800]

@Preach2k Yeah, I mentioned that the Bionic's DDR2 RAM is faster than the Thunderbolt's, along with mentioning that the Bolt has more, so it's space vs speed. I never said the Thunderbolt has DDR2.

Yes, Motorola's smartphones (At least the one's on Verizon, not sure about others) have had MicroSD card's pre-installed as far as I know. I'm stating what I've heard and seen so far. It's strange that no one has mentioned it, I've seen a dozen spec-sheets and no word of one.

I will be using the Front Facing Camera on the Bolt more often than if I owned a Bionic, simply because of the quality. I don't want my family across country having to look at a crappy pixelated version of myself. Plus, with the fact that the Thunda'Bolt has Skype baked in the OS, it'll be even easier to face-chat with people, and I haven't heard of the Bionic getting this feature. Motorola really should of upped the specs on the FFC, if it's meant to be so "social", it's far more important IMO than, say HDMI.

Which brings up another point, I haven't heard anything about DLNA on the Bionic, which is far more important IMO than HDMI, with it being wireless and all, and especially since on the Thunderbolt there will be a device for connecting to TV's that aren't DLNA-enabled, while there is no such device for connecting the Bionic to non-HDMI enable TV's as far as I know. It may have been overlooked in the spec sheets, as like the microSD, but I haven't seen any claiming the Bionic will have DLNA.

The main advantage of the Bionic over the Bolt is the Dual-Core processor, which isn't even being utilized in the current Android OS and array of apps, so I don't really see how it's really an advantage.

The main advantage of the Bolt over the Bionic is just a bunch of nice little touches, like the Kickstand, better cameras, screen quality, Sense UI (Matter of preference, though), overall design of the phone (Again, preference). So it's hard to define it.

One last point; The definition of speculating is making a guess before you know all the facts, so if I waited until Motorola released a full spec sheet, than it wouldn't be speculating .

 

[BlackOtaku]

And Sense is way, way better than Motoblur...it works and looks beautiful, unlike Blur.

Personally I beg to differ, but you know what they say about opinions.

But to answer your question, it really isn't enough to me. I have a Nexus S. I told myself, 'whatever I get on Verizon, it will be significantly better than this. (Not because it's bad, but because technology's progressing at a rate where it's unreasonable not to have a significantly better device more than half a year later when I upgrade)'. That means, dual-core. The software, will catch up. This might better explain my attitude about it:

 

[leonozug]

And Sense is way, way better than Motoblur...it works and looks beautiful, unlike Blur.

Personally I beg to differ, but you know what they say about opinions.

But to answer your question, it really isn't enough to me. I have a Nexus S. I told myself, 'whatever I get on Verizon, it will be significantly better than this. (Not because it's bad, but because technology's progressing at a rate where it's unreasonable not to have a significantly better device more than half a year later when I upgrade)'. That means, dual-core. The software, will catch up. This might better explain my attitude about it:

Nexus S? Dude that's a pretty sweet phone!! Blur isn't a bad thing...sure it works fine. It just seems on here and every other forum, it is not a very liked feature, you know? Sense just seems more sleek to me. But yeah, like you said, about opinions...very true. lol

 

[BlackOtaku]

Nexus S? Dude that's a pretty sweet phone!! Blur isn't a bad thing...sure it works fine. It just seems on here and every other forum, it is not a very liked feature, you know? Sense just seems more sleek to me. But yeah, like you said, about opinions...very true. lol

Yep, I'm aware. Lol. And I can certainly see why; it does slow the phone, it does have it's problems, and there should be an option to turn it off IMO. (And goodness does it look terrible on the non-Droid phones) But I never was partial to Sense for some reason, just couldn't help it. Thing is that with either phone I would probably root and go back to stock though. Although, I have heard that the new version of 'DroidBlur' (from the Bionic and the leaked 2.3 DX ROM) is supposedly leagues better than the current DBlur. We'll see.

PS: Just a look at some of those quotes:

Who’s ready for Gingerbread (Android 2.3) with the brand new version of Blur that we showed you all at CES? I know, I know, you all hate MotoBlur. But try your hardest to at least attempt to trust me when I say that the new version that was featured on the DROID BIONIC, was actually not bad. It no longer looks like it was made for toddlers, has some really nice new shortcuts within apps/menus, and will likely be a strong competitor with HTC’s Sense for best skin.

http://www.droid-life.com/2011/01/31/gingerbread-for-the-droid-x/

P3Droid: If this Blur was the OG blur, no one would have complained about Blur...why moto, why did you wait soo long for this.

http://twitter.com/#!/P3Droid/status/31457744355590145

 

[dll1477]

DROID BIONIC Advantages over Thunderbolt:

Better battery (1930 mAh compared to the Thunderbolt's 1400 mAh)

While these specifications are correct, they don't really address anything meaningful when comparing dissimilar phones. Uers don't care how much energy the the battery can hold, they want to know how long the available energy will last under typical usage. The Bionic's dual core processor requires more energy to power it (esp. when apps are written to use them), and would probably be a failure without that 38% bigger battery - so what we really need is an expression of talk time, standby time, etc. or something more meaningful to the user to compare these two phones.

 

[motty69]

DROID BIONIC Advantages over Thunderbolt:

Better battery (1930 mAh compared to the Thunderbolt's 1400 mAh)

While these specifications are correct, they don't really address anything meaningful when comparing dissimilar phones. Uers don't care how much energy the the battery can hold, they want to know how long the available energy will last under typical usage. The Bionic's dual core processor requires more energy to power it (esp. when apps are written to use them), and would probably be a failure without that 38% bigger battery - so what we really need is an expression of talk time, standby time, etc. or something more meaningful to the user to compare these two phones.

From what I've read if the OS is a true multi-threaded OS the dual core processor is better for battery life. That being said neither 2.2 nor 2.3 is multi-threaded (I believe 3.0 is though). The only thing the dual core will be good for is if game devs take advantage of it, and that's a BIG if. My brother works for Glu (he actually did a lot of the texture and background art for Gun Bros) and if what he tells me is any indication most game devs will not be willing to spend the time to write additional code for one particular phone chipset. It really depends on how popular the phone is if we see any multi-threaded games for it.

 

[dll1477]

could be, but speculation aside: the fact that one battery can store 38% more energy does not say very much about the actual useful time on a single charge which one can expect from two dissimilar phones using different processor architecture, esp when one is more powerful than the other. Thats like purchasing a car based on the size of the fuel tank.

 

[motty69]

could be, but speculation aside: the fact that one battery can store 38% more energy does not say very much about the actual useful time on a single charge which one can expect from two dissimilar phones using different processor architecture, esp when one is more powerful than the other. Thats like purchasing a car based on the size of the fuel tank.

I agree that you can't really count the bigger battery on the Bionic as a win for that phone. Till both are out and see real world usage it's very hard to say the smaller battery in the TB won't last just as long.

That being said, the TBolt will be my 6th HTC phone, and in my experience HTC always picks a battery a bit to small for their smartphones. The stock battery in my Eris is a joke, it can make it through a day, as long as I don't use it till late afternoon. but I'll be getting a TBolt in May (at the latest) so i don't feel like spending $50 or so for a bigger battery for the Eris.

 

[Mapex]

And Sense is way, way better than Motoblur...it works and looks beautiful, unlike Blur.

Personally I beg to differ, but you know what they say about opinions.

But to answer your question, it really isn't enough to me. I have a Nexus S. I told myself, 'whatever I get on Verizon, it will be significantly better than this. (Not because it's bad, but because technology's progressing at a rate where it's unreasonable not to have a significantly better device more than half a year later when I upgrade)'. That means, dual-core. The software, will catch up. This might better explain my attitude about it:

In your situation, you already have a Nexus S, arguably the best Android phone on the market today. Not everyone can say the same. For you, yes, you should hold out until at least Christmas time this year before getting a new phone.

However, for the general populace, your xkcd comic doesn't make sense. The problem with the comic is that undergoing surgery to put USB wiring inside your body is a more or less permanent thing compared to buying a phone, which you can replace on a whim as you've demonstrated yourself.

If you buy a Thunderbolt off-contract, you can always sell it and buy the Bionic later. If you buy a one-year contract, then you can upgrade to a much better phone than the Bionic spring time next year. If you buy a two-year contract only is it even remotely similar to the situation in the comic you provided, but even then you can still sell the device and buy a new one at full retail.

There's no problem future-proofing your phone at all, but it is kind of a moot point since you aren't required to stick yourself into an inflexible two-year contract. If you have the money you can spend slightly more every year to avoid being stuck with a relative brick of a phone 12 to 15 months into your contract.

Really every quarter there is always going to be something better: Q4 2011 will provide some solid devices that will make you think "crap, I shouldn't have bought that Bionic." You might as well just suck it up and upgrade every single chance you get without holding out for too long.