Time is all most up - who's keeping - who's not?

[Mike_is_Mike]

I have no idea how I was able to obtain what I did. Corporate pricing for me was either applied in some limited respect or something else was. I got it for a little more than that. I also got a discount as part of a plan when they offered me an upgrade with a usage discount for one month but for some reason couldn't preorder the phone. Net was a great deal for one year.

I get 23% off service so I can't complain - my phone is paid for in less than a year with that discount.

I'm just finding that I have to do too many work-a-rounds to get this phone to do what my old Blackberry did out of the box - mostly business related.

The latest work-a-round was simply opening attached .rtf files from an email. Had to do a Google search (and found many other people trying to find out the same thing from as far back as 2009) I found a free app called: ThinkFree that will open the files for reading.

I am still keeping the phone, but may go back to Blackberry if (big if) the new Storm 3 is any good. I'll also give a look at the iPhone5 when it makes it's way to Verizon (I'm all Mac anyway on everything except cell phone)

4G is great, but I can live without it to have a better business phone.

A Playbook / Storm4 could be a killer combo in two years
An iPad / iPhone6 could also be a killer combo in two years

And who knows? Maybe even a Droid tablet / Droid phone could be even better?

It's a good thing I'm not married to this Thunderbolt, and even with the palimony to get rid of it in six months I'll be able to keep my house and car.

 

[Hockeypuck55]

Bought it launch day and could not be happier with it.

 

[aplittle]

I'm keeping my TB.

I am coming from an Incredible, so the battery life is about what I'm used to. This phone is basically a bigger, faster Dinc. I love it.

 

[thefireguy286]

Mine is most likely going back tomorrow. Understand I LOVED/LOVE my Droid X. Probably the first phone I've had in a long while that I've had very few complaints with. After playing with the new Gingerbread ROM for my X it will give it a new short life extension for me.

The Thunderbolt is plagued by poor battery life, any way you shake it, it's not wonderful. I thought it would be even worse actually, so I'm not dogging it for it but in comparison the X lasts much longer. I actually could live with that. But for me, the main reason I got this phone living in Philly was LTE. My office, which has plenty of LTE coverage (proven by our USB modem) doesnt hold up on the Tbolt. I wouldn't care if it dropped to 3G, but STAY THERE. This phone has fits of going 4G to 3G and back, and in the 15-20 second interim drops all data connections, holding up or dropping my gchats, and emails. Too annoying to work with when I need to be connected. I need my phone to just work. When I'm home it stays on LTE just fine but seems to 'sleep' a bit if I don't use it, when I do I'm waiting for it to initiate a handshake again. I'm also not crazy how buried the notification LED is in the speaker, not the easiest to see. I love the screen, the overall speed, new Sense, camera quality and especially SVDO over 3 and 4G...but there are too many little nuances to make the basic things work as fluidly while worrying when I should run for the charger.

Hopefully the Bionic or Targa or something else has a better antenna and LTE integration. Since the Bionic has 1920mah battery that already shouldn't be as bad.

 

[thaJack]

Just saying if you get an android phone you will most like have to deal with Sense mods of Android of Blur mods of Android.

Native > Sense > Blur

Definitely don't go Motorola.

 

[Mike_is_Mike]

Mine has already been returned. I loved the device, but the battery life and build quality were deal breakers for me.

I knew going in that the battery life was bad, but I use my devices pretty heavily, and I was typically hitting 15% by noon. Charging wasn't always convenient, but I could have made it work if I put in a ton of effort.

The build quality was the real kicker for me though. Right off the bat I had bad light leak, but I let that slide. Then I noticed that even lightly tapping the search button caused the LCD to ripple in the bottom right corner. The final straw was when 4 pieces of dust magically appeared after about a week under the screen on the bottom-left side.

I went back to Best Buy, played with their live-unit TB and noticed many of the same issues with that one as well. I'm sure they're not all bad, but there are enough reports from folks on here and other forums to make me seriously doubt the consistency of quality from the device. Considering you pay a $50 premium (with contract) over other comparable devices, the issues I had just weren't acceptable to me.

Instead of exchanging for a new device I went with the iPhone on Verizon, mainly because there's nothing Android based on Verizon (aside from the TB) that I was interested in. The iPhone solves the build quality issues and I have no qualms with iOS. I still have my other Android devices as well.

I was looking very hard at the Verizon iPhone4. How long have you had it and what are your first impressions? I have an iPad and the iOS are virtually the same and work very well. It would be nice to have devices with the same OS, makes it easier to jump from one to the other.

 

[mc21]

hmmm guess i was wrong, i thought corporate discount was the because when i was at the store, there were several others buying the phone and they all had the same pricing as me.

 

[twistdhood]

Keeping mine.

This is my first steps into Android, I've been all over the research and watching/waiting on pretty much every device since the rumored Nexus One on VZW (yeah...remember that one!)

The thing that I think is overlooked is the simultaneous voice / data. I think the 3G/4G combo will be a huge benefit, at least I hope so. These items alone make it worth the price.

The battery thing, yeah. It's some serious getting used to. I could go all week without charging my phone before...so having a smart phone regardless of what I picked is a pretty significant change so I'm not judging too harshly. I think 14 days is WAY too short a time to make a universal decision on the device, but I love mine so far. I WILL say my battery seems to crash pretty fast to 70-60%...but will take much longer dwindle down from that point.

Bottom line is I did my research and knew what I was getting. Only hype was WHEN was I getting it.

 

[mc21]

i did the research and thought i knew what i was getting into also. by bad battery life, i was expecting that of the DINC which i had for 6 months. i would have been fine with that. however, the other day i woke up to a text, unplugged it, read it, turned off the screen, left it on the bed and passed out. i woke up 3 hours later and the battery was in the 40 some % range. 3 hours or 0 awake time. that is kind of ridiculous. i have a strong 4g signal and i honestly dont know whats up with it. the other day i was texting and made a short call, and in 3 hours i was at 78%. that is more bearable but the battery does not seem to be consistent at all (at least mine).

 

[Getwired]

I already sent mine back. Having it for just 1 day was enough for me to know that I didn't want to keep it. No LTE coverage at my house or at work, Gingerbread (Liberty 1.75/2.0) for my Droid X just around the corner (or already here), crap battery life, single color LED (WTF?!?)... I'll keep my tweaked out DX until the Bionic or Targa -- locked bootloaders and all -- come out. HTC makes nice stuff (LOVE my Eris), but Moto seems more consistent to me.

Zepfloyd and I must be related...lol.

I reality wanted to love the Thunderbolt; I'll take Sense over Blur any day...guess that's why I use LauncherPro Plus and the "Pure" widgets on all my phones anyway.

I figure that by the time the Targa comes out, Verizon will have built out LTE coverage a bit more in my area, and I can use my final new every 2 upgrade to get a dual core phone, all in 1 shot.

 

[panitsos]

i'm keeping it! best phone i've had so far figured out how to save the battery on it so no problems. only complaint for me is taking video with very very low sound. hopefully an update will fix that. other than that its a kick ass phone

 

[mc21]

i'm keeping it! best phone i've had so far figured out how to save the battery on it so no problems. only complaint for me is taking video with very very low sound. hopefully an update will fix that. other than that its a kick ass phone

i'm sure htc will fix that issue so this seems like a winner for you.

 

[panitsos]

ya its a good phone. i had a bb storm2 was happy with the emails and fb notifications with it, now with this phone i do everything with gmail so i get my emails and notifications just as fast. no complaints here. and its soooooooooo fast lol

 

[DROIDFREAK]

So to the approximately 83% of all of you who are going to keep this phone, is it OK with you that the audio on the video playback is terrible? This, along with the poor customer service responses from HTC and VZW regarding the issue, make this one a dealbreaker for me. Im sending this thunderbolt back to its cloud.

 

[srmccoy]

I was looking very hard at the Verizon iPhone4. How long have you had it and what are your first impressions? I have an iPad and the iOS are virtually the same and work very well. It would be nice to have devices with the same OS, makes it easier to jump from one to the other.

iOS isn't really different between iPad and iPhone besides a few apps and a larger screen. My biggest issues with the TB were the quality issues and the battery life, both of which are top notch on the iPhone. Verizon is currently in-between Android generations, so-to-speak. Aside from the ThunderBolt, there aren't really any 2011 Android devices out. I could have waited for another month or two, but I enjoy iOS enough that I would rather have the iPhone today than something else in a couple of months.

 

[docampo69]

I knew going in that battery life was not going to be great. For all the cool, awesome, and useful things this phone can do, it is well worth the charging issue. I can charge it up!!! Btw, I find myself charging around midday when it drops to around 60 %. Half an hour later, I'm good for the rest of my day.
This is my first Android phone coming from a Blackberry Tour and I'm glad I made the switch!

 

[VCL]

First I will say I left T-Mobile, owned 4 devices,G1, BB9700, MyTouch 4G and my best and most missed is the Nexus One rooted and loaded always. I still own all these devices but they will soon to be just paper weights, that is why I left,I was very pissed off. T-Mobile dropped me so I dropped them. Saying all that I went out looking for a Network of the future, one that will not drop my devices or me, I went Verizon, was a Verizon customer for 9 years before I left and went to T-Mobile, anyways I bought the Thunderbolt, absolutely love this beast, live in a suburb of Boston with the LTE Network. My speeds are sick, so sick it's just silly sick. Getting over 14 MB down and haven't figured out my Upload speeds yet. These speeds are inside my home office, when I go out they get faster. Yikes. Just turned my GPS on for the first time and bang it locked right on. The phone has many of the advanced tricks that the MyTouch 4G had like turning the phone on it's face and goes into speaker phone mode. My battery seems to get better daily just like the MyTouch 4G did. (I think the MyTouch 4G battery might fit into the Thunderbolt) Sorry for the long speech but I am very happy with Verizon and the Thunderbolt.
PS I will miss the ability to just switch the sim card and phones as I want. I absolutely love my Nexus One and was sick for days thinking that phone was a future paper weight. Sent that device back to HTC 3 times and they finally fixed all issues including that crazy touch screen issue. This is why I bought HTC, they are such a quality company and stand behind their products.

 

[bunique4life05]

I am keeping the Thunderbolt and believe its great device for me.
I would not say the battery life is an issue but really just the cons of smart phones today. Luckily all the other minor issues data connective or messaging I do not have. The pink hue the screen has honestly is only when you have the brightness low and for me is not an issue. All I have to say about HTC Sense is fact of not have all the features HTC Sense offers.

 

[78racing]

I will be keeping min as well, came from an OG Droid and this phone is way better in almost every way. I take mine off the charger at 5:00AM every morning and when I get home at 5:00PM I still have anywhere from 30-40% battery left.
I believe the battery issue is like every smartphone out there, if you use 3G all day it will get terrible battery life. I am on wi-fi all day and never had any issues with the battery life on the TBOLT yet.

 

[t0ked]

I'm keeping mine. Absolutely no issues with audio or video playback. Recorded over 15 minutes of 720p video and the audio was great. Recorded voices over a loud crowd even. And the video was sharp and clear. At high zoom it looks like no image stabilization but I have a steady hand. Playback of internet videos and ones I converted seem to play back great and the sound is as good as I can expect from a phone. Love this thing.