Garrett Kelley

After several months of running the stock ROM on my ThunderBolt, it is now happily S-OFF and running CyanogenMod7. I greatly missed Cyanogen after running it on my EVO 4G. The stock HTC ROMs are extremely bloated and slow. Stupid Sense interface. Along with ridding my phone of bloatware I quite enjoy the customization options that CyanogenMod and ADW.Launcher offer. It may be small, but one of my favorite features of CyanogenMod are the lockscreen media buttons. They control both the Music app and the Pandora App! Since I use my phone in the car as a media player, this makes changing tracks very easy. I find that Cyanogen’s phone app is much more user friendly than that of the Sense ROM. Favorite contacts are very easy to get to. In fact…other than a couple of the widgets I don’t like anything about HTC’s Sense ROMs. They are bloated, resource hungry pieces of poop. Steaming poop.

I used http://revolutionary.io/ to root my ThunderBolt. While Revolutionary is only a developer preview right now, it was very easy to use and worked very well! Once I was rooted I loaded CyanogenMod7 and used ROM Manager to flash a compatible version of ClockworkMOD recovery. So far so good. 4G LTE, WiFi, and GPS are all working flawlessly.

If you have an Android phone and are not happy with the stock ROM your manufacturer/carrier provided, I HIGHLY recommend CyanogenMod. Remember though: root at your own risk. It will void your warranty.

I have been using Verizon’s LTE network since March of 2011. It is the fastest cellular network I have ever used and is up there with some of the fastest hardwired Internet connections I’ve ever used! Using Speedtest.net’s Android application I averaged 25.19 Mbps down over 7 samples! Ping time over the same sample averaged 131 ms. That ping time isn’t great, but Internet surfing and downloading of apps is plenty fast. Uploading pictures to various services is noticeably faster with LTE as well. There really is no comparison between Verizon’s 3G and 4G services. When I get into an area with only 3G coverage Internet browsing feels very sluggish and slow, while picture uploading seems to take forever. I realize I’m spoiled by LTE, but it is the way of the future. I only hope in future devices Verizon and phone manufacturers improve LTE battery life. When I’m on LTE the battery in my ThunderBolt only lasts a few hours. I have to keep a spare battery on hand to swap out if I’m planning on being out and away from WiFi for any length of time.

After some discussion we decided that I would leave Sprint and join Susan on a Verizon family share plan. On release day, March 17, I purchased the Verizon HTC ThunderBolt. For those of you who don’t know what the ThunderBolt is yet, it is Verizon’s newest Android phone and first 4G LTE capable phone. Coming from the Sprint HTC EVO 4G, an earlier cousin of the ThunderBolt’s, I feel right at home with the ThunderBolt as they are very similar devices. The ThunderBolt offers a 4.3″ display, 2nd generation Qualcomm® MSM8655 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 768 MB of RAM, 1GB emmc, and a 32GB microSD card. Also included are front and rear cameras, GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, and WiFi hotspot capability (which Verizon is throwing in for free until May 15th).

I am and have been really excited about 4G service. Having had the EVO 4G for the last year and not able to use Sprint’s 4G service (Sprint does not offer 4G in Detroit yet) has really been painful. Verizon’s 4G LTE network I am happy to report is stupid fast. Using the Speed Test app I consistently see between 8 Mbps and 10 Mbps down. I cannot report current upload speeds as Speed Test is not currently reporting accurate results for upload. A forthcoming update to the app will resolve this issue.

I am extremely disappointed to see that Verizon choose to load the ThunderBolt with as much crapware as they did. These largely useless applications consume a lot of precious memory and some of them are battery hogs! The first step for any new ThunderBolt owner should be to disable the BlockBuster application’s background update. Battery life on the ThunderBolt is about what we can expect from a high power 4G phone. Not to say it is acceptable. I learned early on with the EVO that I need to carry a spare battery with me at all times. HTC really needs to find a way to shoehorn larger batteries into these phones. The included 1400 mAh battery just does not have enough juice in it. The ThunderBolt’s 4G radio is quite the battery sucker. If I perform any high amount of downloading over 4G service, the battery goes quickly. WiFi, however, is much easier on the battery. After some tweaking I can usually get the battery to last an acceptable amount of time. See my prior post for tips on better battery life.

The ThunderBolt feels really solid in my hands. It is a well constructed device that appears to be able to take a beating. Side note: this is a really good thing too because my fiancée has a ThunderBolt as well and she is quite hard on her phones! The device is hefty in my hands. If you’re looking for small and light, this is not the phone for you! Other than the battery door, the body appears to be of metal construction. Interestingly, the antenna is integrated into the battery door.

Overall I believe this is a really great device. The device is snappy with no lag at all. Verizon’s 4G service is really fast, although not easy on the battery. I only have a few complaints regarding the device. The crapware is excessive and unnecessary. Most people will never use it. The USB port is on the lower left side instead of the bottom. This makes watching movies with the kickstand and charging at the same time impossible. The battery life is not as good as it should be. The battery door is not easy to remove.

If you are looking for a fast device with the fastest available network, the ThunderBolt is for you!

I thought I would throw together a few tricks for everyone which I’ve
learned over the last year to make the battery last a little longer in
our high power Android phones.

1. Don’t use Live Wallpapers – I know they are pretty, but they can
really drain the battery.
2. Set the display brightness to a lower setting, for example 25%.
3. Set the display timeout to 30 seconds, the default is 1 minute.
4. For applications that background sync or download background data,
decrease the frequency they sync or update. Usually no more frequent than every hour or two.
5. Turn off Friendstream (delete the widget)
6. Keep Bluetooth turned off unless needed
7. Use WiFi whenever possible, but turn off WiFi when not using it.
8. Turn off WiFi network notification.

No matter what anyone tells you DO NOT install a task manager. The
latest versions of Android are quite good at doing this itself. Task
managers can do more harm then good.

I have thought for a very long time that the iTunes software, well, sucks. I tried iTunes early in its history for an extended period of time, several months if I remember correctly. In my opinion the interface was terrible and the library management was poor. Ever since then I have sworn off Apple media players and haven’t looked at iTunes since. The major redeeming quality to iTunes is their store. No one has the sheer quantity of music available that iTunes has. For me, this is not enough though to justify purchasing an iDevice. Apparently not much has changed over the last few years. I defer you to two recent posts by Paul Thurrott over at the SuperSite for Windows.

Just Say No: Is It Time to Say Goodbye to Apple? & Apple iTunes 10