Bye Bye Blackberry, Hello Thunderbolt (My Intitial Review)

I've been waiting for this day for nearly a month. The charging port on my blackberry had given up on me and you had to tape the cord in just the right place or the phone wouldn't charge. Even then it would take over night to completely charge.

Today was the day that I could finally upgrade at a discounted rate. I did all my research and decided on the HTC thunderbolt. Would have loved to stay with blackberry but the options of touchscreen keyboards was almost non-existent.

First, let me say that the bigger screen is fantastic. Wasn't it just a few years ago that they were trying to see how small they could make cell phones? This baby is a really good size...actually, a little bigger than I'm used to so it'll take some time to get used to the feel of it.

In preparation for my purchase I ordered the otter box case because there is NO WAY I want to take the chance of breaking this phone when it cost me so much money.  I've been playing with it for several hours and here are my pros & cons.

CONS:
* There are WAY TOO MANY apps pre-installed and you can't uninstall them.
* There are WAY TOO MANY apps available in the market place...overwhelming.
* I can't find a way to hide or remove widgets/icons from the home page. There are many I don't want/need but I can't find a way to remove them, or even move them to a lower priority.
* The silicone sleeve of the otter box case doesn't stay attached to the phone as well as the BB case did and it is difficult to get the phone in and out of the holster.
* You cannot watch Netflix movies on your phone...apparently it's not compatible with the thunderbolt model. :(
* The keys on the virtual keyboard seem to be a little bit off from a normal QWERTY keyboard so that is taking some time to get used to.
* The spell check/predictive text is annoying and gets in the way when you are typing.
* There isn't any spellcheck feature that will simply correct the words and not try to predict what you are typing. I want spell check only.
* Transfering songs to your phone is not a straight forward process. You have to download V Cast with Rhapsody, sync the songs to that program from your library and then drag and drop them into your phone queue. Not horrible but not as clean as my BB was.
* Not all apps work in portrait and landscape mode
* The main menu screen only works in portrait...it will not rotate to landscape.
* The manuals tell you absolutely nothing about the phone other than the basics that all Verizon phones include. Just figured out that all the icons at the top are not open apps, they are notifications of things that I need to read from apps such as facebook and then clear off the screen,

PROS:
* The display is a very good size
* It has a kick stand so if you ever actually get any movies loaded you can watch them hands-free.
* You can use songs from your phone as ring tones without downloading an app to create them.
* The sound quality is good when playing music, videos, etc
* There are tons of apps (I know, it's on both lists). :)
* The built in wallpapers and such are pretty good. Nice options and there are even some animated choices.
* Sound quality for calls seems to be very good, although the first call I took sounded like it was on speaker even though it wasn't (it was really loud).
* It has Wi-Fi although I've gone this long without it, I doubt I will ever use it.
* The phone can become a mobile hot spot. Haven't had a chance to use it so I'll have to reserve judgment on that too.
* The keyboard works in portrait and landscape.
* Apps downloaded really quickly
* You can do other things while apps are downloading
* It says you can talk on the phone and do other things as well. I've not tried it yet...we'll see if I'm coordinated enough.

I'm reserving judgement on the battery. I charged it fully and it was dead in less than 3 hours. Granted, I was playing with it almost non-stop so that's probably to be expected...hence my reason for refraining from making a judgment call at this time.  I plan to give it a couple weeks and if it's not any better I plan to buy an extended battery. That means I'll also have to give up the otter box and go without or buy a Seidio as that is the only case I've seen that will accommodate the extended battery.


That's all I've come up with in the last few hours. I know, you are thinking THAT'S ALL?!?!?! I'm sure there will be more. If you have this phone and/or know of any ways to resolve some of the items on my cons list, please let me know!