The Thunderbolt has the ability to be a great phone. It's 4G. While it's not dual core, the speed is still very swift, the battery sucks but the extended battery lasts forever... we can solve many problems but NOT the crappy video quality of this phone which is downright unforgivable. I was quite upset to read about how Verizon & HTC let every consumer and reviewer think that there was 8GB of user accessible memory in this phone - or at least some reasonable amount of user accessible memory. The unfortunate truth is that there is ZERO GB of internal memory in this phone available for phone and camera functions - none. Unlike any other prior Android phone I owned, even the old ones, you cannot choose whatever internal memory you may have for video use.
People here kept insisting that the 32GB card supplied is fine, etc. and I told them it's not. I insisted that there is a reason why the iPhone and other phones have a large amount of internal memory and it's not just the rated speed of the card - it's also because it ensures a much smoother functioning of multimedia with internal memory.
I recently went on a trip and took some great pictures and video. This phone isn't a DSLR but the quality of the camera is downright great for what it is. The video came out choppy in various portions, where the 720p function would move smoothly for a few seconds, then stop/jump/skip and then repeat that problem every few seconds. It's not a major skip but enough to notice it and be disappointed as it's not something you have expected to see for a while. Some of you can claim it might be other apps, short system memory, etc. - I don't think so. I tried it with the stock phone and found that it did the same even without other apps installed. The write to the SD card is simply not nearly as smooth and buffering apparently doesn't seem to work as well as intended. I remember the same thing happened when I tried to write all my video to the SD Card on the Moto Droid 1. Recording to the internal memory is much better. The fact is that you can't even use the camera app to use whatever memory you have on your phone -- HTC/Verizon intended this phone to be SD Card only, a major, major step back.
On my trip I was surprised to find that Verizon still hasn't cared to update its MyVerizon app to be compatible with its flagship Android phone. It really makes me wonder what their commitment is towards any phone or product that doesn't begin with the letter "i". Shame on them.
People here kept insisting that the 32GB card supplied is fine, etc. and I told them it's not. I insisted that there is a reason why the iPhone and other phones have a large amount of internal memory and it's not just the rated speed of the card - it's also because it ensures a much smoother functioning of multimedia with internal memory.
I recently went on a trip and took some great pictures and video. This phone isn't a DSLR but the quality of the camera is downright great for what it is. The video came out choppy in various portions, where the 720p function would move smoothly for a few seconds, then stop/jump/skip and then repeat that problem every few seconds. It's not a major skip but enough to notice it and be disappointed as it's not something you have expected to see for a while. Some of you can claim it might be other apps, short system memory, etc. - I don't think so. I tried it with the stock phone and found that it did the same even without other apps installed. The write to the SD card is simply not nearly as smooth and buffering apparently doesn't seem to work as well as intended. I remember the same thing happened when I tried to write all my video to the SD Card on the Moto Droid 1. Recording to the internal memory is much better. The fact is that you can't even use the camera app to use whatever memory you have on your phone -- HTC/Verizon intended this phone to be SD Card only, a major, major step back.
On my trip I was surprised to find that Verizon still hasn't cared to update its MyVerizon app to be compatible with its flagship Android phone. It really makes me wonder what their commitment is towards any phone or product that doesn't begin with the letter "i". Shame on them.