So my current Blackberry phone died pretty much today and now I am looking for a replacement phone. I am not due for an upgrade anytime soon and no cheap WP7/WP8 phones are out there so I guess next on the list would be Android. I see decently priced TBS in the for sale section here so I am just wonder: Are Thunderbolts still worth buying? It would least need to last me a year+.
It utterly depends on your needs and wants. If you turn off 4G and run it in CDMA-only mode, that seems to mitigate a lot of the connectivity problems. If you get the Rezound (or if you can tolerate the weight, one of the larger extended) battery, you should be able to get all-day battery life unless you use the screen a LOT or signal strength is especially poor where you tend to hang out.
You'll be getting one of the better cameras out there, a pretty solid-performing phone that has a decent reputation for durability and holding cosmetic value other than the kickstand scratching up easily. Oh, and lest I forget, the concentrated awesomeness that is having a built-in kickstand - you have to have one for a while to really understand how pathetic a phone seems without it. Plus you'll have a GPS that locks very quickly, a decent amount of built-in memory, a front facing camera that is now well-supported in Skype and Google Talk and other apps, a strong WiFi radio that does pretty well, and an all-around decently-built phone that (if you get a good one) will keep you satisfied if not ecstatic for quite a while.
On the downside, you'll have an older-spec phone running Gingerbread with little hope of even Ice Cream Sandwich in your future, running on an oddball sidechannel of Verizon's CDMA network (to support simultaneous voice and data over CDMA, which is cool, but it's not as well-supported a sidechannel as it once was) paired with a first-generation LTE radio that can't hold anything but a very strong LTE signal. With the battery you'll need to go all-day strong, it'll be a brick, and changing out batteries means a reboot which makes a stupid and ridiculously loud thunderclap sound and takes well over a minute. You'll have an LCD screen that is barely adequate outdoors.
But, hey, Tbolts are pretty cheap at this point, so it's probably a pretty good choice to save some money.