HTC Thunderbolt Review: The First Verizon 4G LTE Smartphone
by Brian Klug on April 27, 2011 12:12 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Verizon
- LTE
- 4G
- Android
- HTC Thunderbolt
- Mobile
- MDM9600
- MSM8655
The other obvious oddity is software. Back in the day HTC famously built their own CDMA2000 support into Android 2.1 1.5 and released a host of devices. Android 2.2 1.6 (Got my versions screwed up, thanks Brendan!) swung around and built all of that in natively, and most of the world didn’t notice much difference, thankfully. Odd quirks such as cell standby showing inordinate power use in "about battery use" were about the only manifestation of this hack, outside phone test menus.
History loves to repeat itself, and this time the situation is that Android 2.2 lacks native awareness for 4G LTE. As a result, you get odd things hanging around like the 20 MB YouTube WiFi upload restriction, and the 128 MB mobile upload (for any connection) file size limitation. I’m sure a number of similar things are floating around, all of which previously pandered to the limitations of 3G that have no business being around anymore.
My closing thoughts with regards to LTE on the Thunderbolt are that it’s impressively fast, fast enough that it now feels like loading through pages is now CPU-bound instead of network-bound. In many ways that’s a much better situation to be in, as SoC updates follow Moore’s law, and network updates seem to eons to roll out due to spectrum reallocation, network build out, testing, and finally hitting go. Dual core is the solution, and it’s a shame the Thunderbolt isn’t. Right up that alley is MSM8960 and MSM8930, which are dual core and single core Krait, respectively. A quick refresher on Qualcomm’s naming scheme for SoCs is that the second digit connotes what cellular network standard support is built in: 2 is for 3GPP family only connectivity (GSM, EDGE, WCDMA/UMTS, HSPA), 6 is for 3GPP and 3GPP2 connectivity (so everything above, plus CDMA2000, EVDO, e.t.c.), and 9 now will mean LTE.
With both MSM8960 and MSM8930, the LTE modem is built into the SoC, resulting in both smaller overall package size and likely notable improvements in power consumption from everything being made at one process. At that point, LTE becomes much less of a design challenge, and I expect battery life to be better as a result. If you want something to wait for, it’s MSM8960. The other thing to watch for are the successors to MDM9600 - the MDM9615 and MDM9625, which were announced during MWC. The former is targeted towards a 28 nm process offers some performance increases alongside reduced power consumption and a smaller overall package, making it ideal for handsets. The latter is a category 4 device (as opposed to category 3 for the former two) and thus offers a higher level of performance, and likely will go into USB modems and other data-centric platforms.
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cmdrdredd - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
Or if you're stuck on an old android phone that has no memory, hardly any cpu or gpu power, and bogs down heavily all the time thanks to the new OS revisions not being highly optimized for slower phones (no upgrade path even for some too), and you decided you don't want to be a slave to Apple and what they decide you can and cannot have/do with the device, you might look at this for your upgrade if you were itching right now. Why wait for June to see the new Droid Bionic when you need a phone now that works properly and is faster?deputc26 - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
Now THIS is a smartphone review. This is the meticulous quantitative data that I keep coming back to Anandtech for. Would like to see real world load times of real web sites though.7Enigma - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
Seconded. I'm not a huge fan of smartphones (I don't own one and normally just skim the reviews for hardware/OS information) but this one reminded me of old-school Anandtech. Nitty-gritty detail and substance that anyone can tell required a LONG time to write.And factoring in the legitimate excuse of being ill made it all the more impressive.
Great job again Brian.
kurt-o - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
The article stated "Remember that although the HTC EVO 4G could have conceivably supported simultaneous 4G WiMAX and 1x voice, the feature was disabled and to my knowledge hasn’t ever been enabled. It’s for this reason - until the Thunderbolt no proper procedure for characterizing dual transceiver phones existed."Unless I'm confused here, the article appears to have a blatant error. The HTC EVO 4G supports simultaneous 4G WiMAX and 1x-Voice. Has since day 1.
metafor - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
I think what's meant is that it can't do simultaneous voice and data over 3G, which is true. If you are in a 4G area, I believe the Evo can use WiMax for data and 3G for voice.Brian Klug - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
Are you certain? Although I have an EVO I'm not in a WiMAX market, so I can't test for certain. I know that WiFi + 1x voice is a definite go, 1x voice + EVDO is a no, but I was under the impression again that 1x voice + WiMAX is also a no.From the user manual:
"Can I make calls and use data services at the same time?
You cannot use voice and data services simultaneously. If you receive a call while data service is active, your device forwards the call to voicemail. You can place an outgoing call anytime, but it will interrupt any in-progress data session."
-Brian
privater - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
Does this phone have a nuclear battery as accessory?ompaidjo - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link
:DI kept thinking about the same thing, since I bought this phone..
strikeback03 - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link
It isn't great, but then again I'd say that if you need several hours of web browsing time per charge a smartphone is probably not the right device for you anyway.ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
4G brings better speed for the end user, but sometimes I wonder if I'd be more worthwhile to invest instead in existing 3G infrastructure to ensure wide area, consistent 3G coverage at the upper speed spec of 3G rather than focus on 4G peak speeds in some areas. I guess 4G is more worthwhile on CDMA networks where the speed disparity is greater than on GSM networks where up to 14Mbps HSPA vs LTE isn't as big a difference in usability.On an unrelated note, your benchmark charts don't seem to include the updated iOS 4.3 results that say the previous Dell Venue Pro review had. The updated browser in iOS 4.3 compared to iOS 4.2 makes a material difference in the benchmarks.