HTC Thunderbolt Android Smartphone Speed Lives Up to Its Name

It's pretentious, right? The phone launches, not with a geeky Droid pronouncement, nevertheless with one of the most terrifying sounds nature can muster. Guess what? The joke was on me because the Thunderbolt is frighteningly fast for a compact, albeit hefty gadget with a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.

First, here are some noteworthy specifications. The device, powered by the familiar Android 2.2 operating system, features a comely 4.3-inch, touch-screen WVGA display with 480 by 800 resolution.

The Thunderbolt is 4

The Thunderbolt is 4.75 long by 2.44 inches wide by 0.56 inches thick; it's thicker than the normal cell phone. Still, at a hefty 6.23 ounces, the gray, plastic-covered device with a glass screen will weigh a hole in all however the toughest of pockets. Blame the heavier battery used to supply the power demands of Verizon's speedy 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution, latest standard in the mobile network technology) network.

The call quality was fine. There was no tininess or echo. Nevertheless, I'm more of a text guy, so the user interface is more important to me than the calls or even the dialer.

To that end, the more I use HTC Android phones, the more impressed I become by the HTC Sense interface; the keyboard is a delight to type on.

The device has big

The device has big, beautiful buttons that are then-placed by and large. I don't like how the voice search button is then to the comma button when I type a text message, however that's a minor quibble. Thunderbolt employs Sense 2.0, with the lovely FriendStream social-network account aggregator.

The Thunderbolt is all about the network. When Verizon executives touted their 4G LTE network at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, their oft-repeated refrain was that it was 10 times faster than 3G.

Whether it was basic Google searches or multiple YouTube videos or games launching back to back to back, the software danced and sparkled on the screen, thanks to Verizon's 4G LTE. I downloaded a dozen applications, all just to watch them land from the Android Market to the Thunderbolt in 5 to 10 seconds.