Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I think what the ThunderBolt does, is make the next iPhone HAVE to have 4G. Otherwise, it will become very weak compared to 4G phones. I know a guy who had 38Mbps up and down using 4G.
 
My brother got a thunderbolt and I have an iphone 4. We have the whole 4g thing in this area, but the thunderbolt kinda fails. The touch screen is jerky, inaccurate, and unpolished.

If it had the same touch screen UI as an iphone it would definitely win. But right now, it doesn't.

And the battery life is so bad that they are releasing a battery that will last 2x as long, which my brother says will still be shorter than an iphone.
 
My brother got a thunderbolt and I have an iphone 4. We have the whole 4g thing in this area, but the thunderbolt kinda fails. The touch screen is jerky, inaccurate, and unpolished.

If it had the same touch screen UI as an iphone it would definitely win. But right now, it doesn't.

And the battery life is so bad that they are releasing a battery that will last 2x as long, which my brother says will still be shorter than an iphone.

Exactly my experience with the thunderbolt and, well every android device I've played with. Specs mean nothing if the OS has little polish.
 
Umm, the Incredible and subsequently the Thunderbolt pretty much have the industries best rating for the quality of the camera in the phone.

I have an Incredible, and have an iPhone 4 sitting here as yet unactivated because I'm a quandary myself. Short of the 4G the Thunderbolt is nothing but an Evo. The beauty of the Android OS is the fact it's open source with a huge developer following, and once rooted there are huge numbers of ROM's available that can make the phone just about anything you want. Want it to look like an iPhone? Install MIUI. Want more features than you can shake a stick at? Install Cyanogen Mod 7. You don't have that option in an iPhone. While you can jailbreak it you're still at the base of it left with the features and the user experience Apple wants all their lemmings to have.

Don't get me wrong, I have a ton of Apple gear, but it's because it was the best suited for the job. Only reason i actually got the iPhone is because it plays with the rest of the gear, not because it's my favorite phone.

Industries best for camera quality?? Hardly! Total MP's maybe, but quality does not even come close to the iP4's camera. I compared many pic's side by side, the thunderbolts camera is uselesss in lowlight, and for close up shots. Colors are not near as bright as on the iPhone. Even the reviews for the Evo say that the iP4's camera is better quality pics despite lower MP's.
 
Returned the Thunderbolt after 2 days. It's a piece of crap folks. Sorry. Fast 4G speeds? You bet...although coverage is still not that widespread. Even in a 4G city you will probably be on 3G 50-75% of the time.

It has serious bugs, anytime I was at home on WiFi for any amount of time, it would not automatically switch back ot 4G when leaving the house without a reboot. Went through a couple of little funky moods where it would act like it didn't have a data connection despite displaying 4G & 3G. Battery is as everyone already knows...horrible. I like the big screen sometimes, but it's too big really for me for everyday use as far as how it feels in the hand. It refused to play nice with m iMac, could not sync any music using double twist. Everytime plugged in I got an error and it said it couldn't read the disk. Yes, I know to select Mount it as a drive....still didn't work. PC users probably won't have any issues. Tried to stream some NCAA games off of CBS Sports, video using flash was unwatchable.....very pixelated and choppy, even with a 4G signal. Pulled out my iPhone to watch with the March madness app with no problems.

I would like to switch to the Verizon iPhone, but waiting to see what happens with iPhone 5 in a couple of months.

Nice try with the thunderbolt, but it's really a worse version of the EVO. Again, the speeds of their LTE network show real promise, too bad we'll probably have to wait a year to get that on the iPhone. Hopefully AT&T users will at least get HSPA + this summer.
 
I have both an android and iPhone........ in my opinion the iPhone is much better. The android is nice too, but the iPhone is an iPhone :apple:
 
Got a link to any firm plans?

AFAIK, AT&T has only said they'll start deploying some LTE at the end of the year. They said the same thing last year.

Many observers figure that a sure sign that AT&T isn't in any rush to deploy LTE, is that they decided to stop bashing T-Mobile and instead join them in calling HSPA+ as "4G".

It's actually a pretty good plan. Why spend money on yet another technology when they're just finally getting up to speed on their current deployment?

Verizon doesn't have much choice. They need and want to go to something like LTE. ATT can drag out using UMTS for a few more years.

Were you not following CES? ATT stated they were gonna complete LTE deployment by end of 2013.
 
Were you not following CES? ATT stated they were gonna complete LTE deployment by end of 2013.

ATT said they'd be substantially complete with whatever LTE deployment they were going to do by then, but never said where or how much.

Several times they've said that they'll only put LTE in major population centers and rely on HSPA+ everywhere else.

Basically, the same deployment plan they used with 3G and EDGE.
 
Ok, I get all the "android is bad, IOS is good" chatter but as a simple hotspot this thing rocks. I'm sitting at Starbucks and lucky to get 400 on their free WiFi. I kick in the TB and hit 12,000 down! Sure I don't really need that much speed, but it is just cool to have.

Now if I could get an iPhone with 6,000 or so and unlimted data, I would jump on it. But that won't happen on VZ anytime soon and jumping off the family plan (@$40/month for voice and data) to go to AT&T just doesn't make economic sense. Also, because of the way I use the family plan (mom and dad will only ever use a phone so I upgraded on their line and then switched to a new one) I'm in without a new contract. If VZ does kill the hotspot deal or come out with a fast iPhone, I can bail and put the phone on eBay.

I guess the bottom line is more how and why you will use the thing. I agree that it would suck as the only thing in your pocket, but if you need and use a VZ hotspot the Thunderbolt rocks.

FWIW
DLM
 
Last edited:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

haddman said:
Returned the Thunderbolt after 2 days. It's a piece of crap folks. Sorry. Fast 4G speeds? You bet...although coverage is still not that widespread. Even in a 4G city you will probably be on 3G 50-75% of the time.

It has serious bugs, anytime I was at home on WiFi for any amount of time, it would not automatically switch back ot 4G when leaving the house without a reboot. Went through a couple of little funky moods where it would act like it didn't have a data connection despite displaying 4G & 3G. Battery is as everyone already knows...horrible. I like the big screen sometimes, but it's too big really for me for everyday use as far as how it feels in the hand. It refused to play nice with m iMac, could not sync any music using double twist. Everytime plugged in I got an error and it said it couldn't read the disk. Yes, I know to select Mount it as a drive....still didn't work. PC users probably won't have any issues. Tried to stream some NCAA games off of CBS Sports, video using flash was unwatchable.....very pixelated and choppy, even with a 4G signal. Pulled out my iPhone to watch with the March madness app with no problems.

I would like to switch to the Verizon iPhone, but waiting to see what happens with iPhone 5 in a couple of months.

Nice try with the thunderbolt, but it's really a worse version of the EVO. Again, the speeds of their LTE network show real promise, too bad we'll probably have to wait a year to get that on the iPhone. Hopefully AT&T users will at least get HSPA + this summer.

Thanks for the great info! I'm personally sitting in my two week window with my iphone4 wondering if I should give the thunderbolt a go. These forums are definitely help shore up my decision to stay Apple. Best part is Im still sitting with an upgrade so if the iPhone 5 is so epic, I can scoop it when it drops. So I think I'm happy right here for now. I've had an android and it's good but not as swank as iOS.
 
ATT said they'd be substantially complete with whatever LTE deployment they were going to do by then, but never said where or how much.

Several times they've said that they'll only put LTE in major population centers and rely on HSPA+ everywhere else.

Basically, the same deployment plan they used with 3G and EDGE.

So we should expect an AT&T LTE iPhone some time in 2014? If you go by everyone's claims that it isn't ready or they didn't need it cause wifi was everywhere or that EDGE ( or in this case 3G) is just as fast maybe even later…
 
ATT said they'd be substantially complete with whatever LTE deployment they were going to do by then, but never said where or how much.

Several times they've said that they'll only put LTE in major population centers and rely on HSPA+ everywhere else.

Basically, the same deployment plan they used with 3G and EDGE.

They just stated they are going LTE to 95% of the population with the buyout.

ZING!!!!!
 
If VZ does kill the hotspot deal or come out with a fast iPhone, I can bail and put the phone on eBay.

They've already said that's only free until May. Then they're pushing an OTA to break it.
 
They just stated they are going LTE to 95% of the population with the buyout.

ZING!!!!!

Excellent. So today AT&T has changed its tune, in order to woo Washington into approving the merger.

If they actually do it, it'll be great for everyone.

Personally, I find it a bit surprising how the government has let most of the Baby Bells merge back together again over the years.

I think we could be in trouble soon if we end up without T-Mobile and Sprint to keep prices down.
 
Personally, I find it a bit surprising how the government has let most of the Baby Bells merge back together again over the years.
.

I was thinking the same thing, but isn't Verizon also comprised of several of the baby bell companies? I think it's funny that Bell has basically just reformed into mega companies to battle itself. :D
 
To be realistic, Thunderbolt needs to be compared to iPhone 5 or whatever it will be called. iPhone 4 is a 9 month old phone and Thunderbolt is just out. It is normal that Thunderbolt crushes iPhone 4.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.