[tek818]

Was looking through some of the earlier leaked pics of the Thunderbolt and noticed something that didn't initially catch my eye when the pics were released...

I'm an EVO owner who recently had Sprint's 4G network deployed in my city, Los Angeles. I now know that when the Sprint Hotspot feature is active, and I have 4G coverage, the Hotspot icon in the upper left portion of the task bar shows "4G". When there is only 3G coverage, the hotspot icon shows 3G. Which leads me to this question...

If the Thunderbolt in this picture clearly has 4G(LTE) coverage, why does the hotspot icon only show 3G? Sure, likely is a beta ROM, but call me a cynic, I could TOTALLY see Verizon doing something old-school big red and only allowing 3G Hotspot/tethering on 4G phones in order to not kill sales on their coming 4G MiFi and 4G laptop cards. Anyone...?

[biff6789]

Fear not: If what you say were to really happen, it would only take a matter of weeks before the wizards over at XDA figured out how to get around it and enable true 4G tethering

[tek818]

I'm not worried at all! HAPPY Sprint customer here... Just tossing it out there, since I hadn't seen anyone mention this.

[menschmaschine5]

Since the mobile hotspot thing is probably the main selling point of 4G (on the phone hardware that we're likely to have means there isn't a whole lot of difference between 3G and 4G on phones), I really doubt they'd limit the mobile hotspot to 3G.