Android Phones
Verizon offers the HTC Thunderbolt smartphone for free with 2-year contract
January 20, 2012 | by Adrian Diaconescu
Android Phones, Carriers, HTC, Verizon
I know, I know, the HTC Thunderbolt is not exactly on top of anyone’s shopping lists right now, as it’s pretty expensive and only runs that raggedy Android 2.2. But what would you say if you had the chance to get the 4.3-incher for free?
Of course you’re interested now, even thought you probably already suspect that you’ll have to tie yourself on a two-year contract to get this gadget for free. The offer comes from Verizon Wireless and is limited, being only available until January 26.
As you might or might not know, the Thunderbolt comes packing a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and features all the things you could need from a mid-range smartphone nowadays, including an 8 MPx rear-facing camera with autofocus and LED flash, a 1.3 MPx front-facing webcam, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, GPS and Bluetooth 2.1.
While the design is clearly the most important ace up the Thunderbolt’s sleeve (it is sleek, isn’t it?), we should also mention that Verizon Wireless is selling the smartphone with 4G LTE connectivity. That’s a pretty nice feature to have nowadays, especially if you can get it for free.
Sure, the problem with the OS still stands, but hey, there’s still worse things than having Froyo with HTC Sense on top, aren’t there?
The 4.3-inch screen sported by the Thunderbolt is decent, while not unbelievably bright or capable, and comes with a 480 x 800 pixels resolution, while the battery should itself be satisfying, but not extraordinary.
All in all, there are definitely better options than the HTC Thunderbolt on today’s smartphone market, but are there any faster or stronger gadgets to be made available for free? I personally think not, so my advice is to hit the source link right now and to get in line for one of Verizon’s special discounted Thunderbolts!
Update: The HTC Thunderbolt from Verizon ships with Android 2.2, but updates immediately to Android 2.3 Gingerbread, as some of you stated in the comments below. Thank you for noticing and sorry for the inconvenience!
Thunderbolt has gingerbread
It is actually running 2.3.4
I'm sorry to correct you, but if you'll hit the Verizon link, you'll see that the smartphone is in fact running Android 2.2, as I said in the article.
It may ship to you with 2.2 but as soon as you turn it on it will get a gingerbread update
Have to confirm, that while it was definitely slow in coming, the T-Bolt received Gingerbread awhile ago…
Love it… I posted the gingerbread update and apparently my comment was deleted… Do some research. I own the phone. I'm running it stock and I have gingerbread….
look yer famous for not checking your facts and refusing to listen when somebody offers a correction! yay! job well done kiddo! http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/oqf6d/iv…
Fail hard.
First of all, I didn't delete any comments, so they must have ended up in ''spam''… Secondly, on the Verizon website the phone was listed as running Android 2.2, so that's the information I ran in the article and I don't think that I am to blame and crucify like you did on several blogs. However, it's true that it ships with 2.2 and then it updates to 2.3, so I corrected the information in the post. Hope to see you all back on this blog and keep the comments decent!
Just to reiterate, I have the Thunderbolt & I am running gingerbread. I do not think that it’ll ever get the ICS update though even though HTC has said that they intend to.
Verizon can’t give this piece of shit away. Owned it for 8 months. Terrible phone. Proud rezound owner now.
It would have been okay if it wasn’t a 2 year contract
Well then Verizon is wrong too. I just configured 200 thunderbolts for a client and all of them had 2.3.4 out of the box.
This is my first time visit at here and i am actually impressed to read everthing at alone place.
I believe everything published made a bunch of sense. But, consider this, what if you were to write a awesome headline? I mean, I don’t wish to tell you how to run your blog, but what if you added a post title that makes people want more? I mean ? Verizon offers the HTC Thunderbolt smartphone for free with 2-year contract is kinda boring. You should glance at Yahoo’s home page and note how they write post titles to grab viewers interested. You might try adding a video or a picture or two to grab readers interested about what you’ve written. In my opinion, it might make your blog a little livelier.
Outstanding quest there. What happened after? Take care!
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