With high expectations attached with the phone before its launch, it does deliver on most fronts. The phone is massive on all fronts with massive hype, massive performance and massive size and weight. It is the first phone to run on LTE. LTE promises speeds on a phone comparable to broadband desktop speeds, thus blurring the lines between desktop and a smart phone experience. The experience on Thunderbolt is quite amazing with brilliantly high download/upload speeds and lower latency connections that provide better responsiveness. All this is backed by solid hardware which provides to the great speedier experience on the phone.

But, it is not a phone free of all faults or downers. It does hosts a few imperfections which buyers needs to be aware of before shelling out dough for this piece of smartest smartphone.

Specifications

• Carrier: Verizon Wireless
• OS: Android 2.2 (Froyo) with HTC Sense UI
• Processor: 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon (QSD8255), Adreno 205 GPU, and MDM9600 chipset for 3G/4G
• RAM: 768MB
• Storage: 8GB internal, 32GB microSD (pre-installed)
• Display: 4.3-inch WVGA with 480×800 resolution
• Battery: Lithium-ion with 1400 mAh capacity
• Ports: microUSB 2.0, 3.5mm audio jack, SIM slot
• Weight: 6.23 ounces
• Dimensions: 4.75 x 2.44 x 0.56 inches
• Camera: 8MP with auto-focus, dual LED flash, HD video capture, 1.3MP front-facing camera
• Sensors: Accelerometer, A-GPS, digital compass, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor
• Keyboard: Virtual QWERTY
• Networks: CDMA 800/1900Mhz (2G); CDMA2000 EV-DO (3G); 700Mhz LTE (4G)
• Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n; Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR
• Tethering: USB + mobile Wi-Fi hotspot
• Price: $249 (with 2-year contract)

Is it for you ?

This is for you if you desire to achieve maximum performance you can derive from  a smartphone. It is quite surely the fastest phone out of all existing smartphones in the market today. Running on LTE speeds of +10Mbps, it is bound to run fast but even on 3G network or WiFi the phone loads apps, webpages, videos etc are stunningly quick speed. So if you are the ones who requires great performance from your phone, need a workhorse device and need a equipment which won’t seem technological backward in 2 years, then this phone is for you.

Major Features

:

The hardware : It has a hardware which can keep support the speed experienced on the LTE network. Of course, there remains a thought of comparison between WiMax and LTE but seeing shift of major providers towards LTE, it is likely that upcoming spamrtphones will have to LTE complaint in terms of support by hardware. Thunderbolt, with its upgraded 1GHz Snapdragon, Adreno 205 GPU, and MDM9600 chip for LTE has everything you need for a nice LTE experience. Also the issue of simultaneous transmission of voice and data have been solved. Along with this, other hardware specifications add to it – bright, crisp WVGA display, an 8MP camera on the back, a 1.3MP camera on the front, a 32GB SD card (included), a 1400 mAh battery, and all the latest digital sensors.

High Performance: The performance bar set by Thunderbolt is quite high. Even in aspects not involving influence of LTE networks, the device performs quite well owing to the combination of the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon processor (single core), a dedicated GPU (Adreno 205), LTE chip (MDM9600), 768MB of RAM, and 8GB of integrated eMMC storage. Thus performace of the overall phone is a major attraction.

Form Factor: Some pf the smartphones lack with the looks and a strong body. Thunderbolt, hosts as unibody aluminium frame which can be seen as a combination of Google Nexus one and HTC Desire with square body as HTC Evo. This results in a sturdy, attractive metal body. Although the phone is a bit large and on the heavier side, it is quite strong and gives the feel of a phone and not a toy.

HTC Sense: HTC Sense is one of the best UI right now in the market. Many vendors have tried maskig android with their UI and most of the times it is not as good as expected. As noted by many, most of vendors skins decrease the android experience but not HTC Sense. Although, if you are the one to flash your phone and put in totally new ROM then might not be a great plus point for you.

Is nothing wrong with it ?

Absolutely not. It does lack from certain imperfections, if you may call them.

4G Battery Life: With Desire HD, HTC was criticised for the poor battery life it provided. With Thunderbolt running 4G, HTC was expected to somehow come up with major improvements in battery life. The phone comes with 1400mAh battery which is not quite enough for a 4G experience. As seen from use by testers, the phone runs a whole day with use of 3G and Wifi but it runs around half a day on 4G. You would have to employ various setting alteration to make it last longer on 4G (Probably another post about it)

No Dual Core: THe phone runs on single core whereas most phone that would be competiting with Thunderbolt would be running on dual core. HTC has a strong relation with QUalcomm, which hasn’t come out with its dual core processor , thus Thunderbolt only hosts a single core. Although this doesn’t really affect the speed but it could have certainly improved battery life.

Thunderbolt is a right now probably the best smartphone on the shelf. With other makers, coming out with LTE based devices in second half of 2011, the phone seems to have a lot of time unrivaled. Despite the battery issue, the phone is dynamo with its performance and hardware abilities. It is a lightning fast device on 3G and Wi-Fi, but provides and surreal experince with 4G.

(I have not rated them but given some of the good options to consider)

Toshiba Canvio Portable

Toshiba’s Canvio is one of the lightest external drives around. The attractive point of this disk is its small size and light weight with the make quality of Toshiba. It can be fitted in your pocket or purse and carried around anywhere. It weighs around 6 ounces and supports USB 2.0. It comes with storage upto 1TB with number of lower storage options available. It comes with NTI BackupNow EZ software for easy storage and backup options. It requires Win XP or higher to run.

Colours: Blue, Green, Red, Black, Silver

Iomega eGo

Iomega’s eGo drives are available both in desktop and portable models. eGo is a good option if you are looking for a desktop external disk.

eGo desktop comes with capacity of 2TB connected to the desktop by USB 2.0. The eGo 3.0 version supports USB 3.0, thus higher transfer rate. Also this version has higher capacity upto 3TB.

eGo portable is also a good option to consider. Lightweight and tough, eGo portable is available in numerous capacities. The dropguard feature of the disk prevents any damage to the disk from a fall as high as 51 inches.The price also includes Protection Suite backup and anti-virus software by download.

Colours: Red, Silver, Blue, Black and more

LaCie Rugged

This hard disk is specially mentioned because of its sturdy structure and shock resistent capabilities. It has a sturdy and unique aluminum casing and rubber sleeve for added protection. The Rugged XL comes in 1 TB and 2 TB models and supports data transfer by eSATA and USB 2.0. It also supports connection by firewire 400 and 800 and by USB 2.0. Both the Rugged and the Rugged XL are compatible with Time Machine backup software for Mac OS X.

Western Digital My Book Studio

The WD My Book Mirror Edition looks good, with its sleek black casing and curved corners. With capacity upto 1Tb and portable form factor of 3.5″, WD hard disk comes from the popular brand name of WD. It has interfacing abilities with firewire 400 and 800, SATA I and USB 2.0. Fast performance and sturdiness are two main attributes of this disk along with availability in different colors.

Note: This post was not aimed at technically reviewing the hard disk but rather providing you with a start to help you figure out your preferred hard disk to buy.

It was a major problem for users with more than one gmail account to switch accounts. One had to sign out of one account and sign in into another account. This problem was solved when google introduced the feature of ‘multiple sign in’. If you activate this option, you can switch accounts with just one click being in the same browser. But now, there is another option to make it even simpler and read the emails of your other accounts in the same inbox. Google has introduced the feature of email delegation.

Although this feature introduced by Google aims to let any other gmail users to access your email account and read and respond to emails on your behalf. So, it is great for those who would like someone to read and reply to their email on their behalf. This feature can also be used to read emails of more than one gmail accounts by the same person in a single inbox by activating this feature for all but one gmail account and choosing that one gmail account as the account where delegated emails reach. Thus it may prove to be better from multiple sign in in sense that it does not require you to sign into the accounts, rather it fetches emails of all accounts into a single inbox.

In general, the delegation feature allows you any designated user to read, reply or delete your emails. It also enables to access the contacts of the account. It won’t allow the person to alter your password or account setting. Also it won’t allow log in to Google chat of the delegated account.

Enabling delegation feature

1. Click on Settings link on your gmail window

2. Click on ‘Accounts and Imports‘ tab. Under Grant Access to your account, click on add another account

3. Enter the email address of the person whom you would like to be able to access your account. If you want to manage your multiple gmail accounts, add one of your gmail accounts from which you would like to read all your emails.

4. You will see a confirmation message. Click on email to grant access.

5. An email will be sent to the account explaining him that you have granted access to him. Now in case, you added your gmail account as monitoring primary address, you will receive the email and access to your delegated account.

When you’ll have access to more than one account, you’ll be able to access any of them from the account selector in the right top corner

Each account will be opened in new window to ease the distinction between the accounts. Signing out of your main account will lead to signing you out of all the accounts.

A small video from google to explain the process.

Note that this feature is introduced to allow other users to manage your account but as explained in the points above you can configure it to use it to manage all your gmail accounts.

How to Install Cracked Mac Store Apps on Mac

Step 1: Install the latest Snow Leopard update (10.6.6) and sign into the new App Store (in your dock).

Step 2: Download Twitter for Mac and navigate to Applications folder to locate Twitter. Just right click and select Show Package Contents and then navigate to Contents folder. Copy_CodeSignature, _MASReceipt and CodeResources.

Step 3: Download Angry Birds (Link http://51.fi/fT).

Step 4: Run the dmg file and drag Angry Birds into the Applications folder.

Step 5: Right click and select Show Package Contents and then navigate to Contents folder and delete _CodeSignature, _MASReceipt and CodeResources.

Step 6: Now paste in the files you copied from the Twitter.app.

Step 7: Done. Enjoy Angry Birds and any other .app file from the new Mac App Store that you can find online.

Via gadgetsdna

Read the rest of the post “Install LibreOffice 3.3 on Ubuntu using PPA“

You can also add new feeds. The interface is pretty intuitive to play around with. When you get new feeds it shows up in a notification box near the Windows system tray.

Following are some of the snapshots of the app to lure you into trying it.

Install NewsSquares Web App for Google Chrome

1. Set up your work email

Android has a built-in email app which is although a bare minimum but still serves the purpose. You can also install better email apps on your android. Setting up an email account of a email provider like google, yahoo etc. is quite simple and I believe you must have done it by now. But you can also add your work email account to the email app to regularly get updates of your work email.

You’ll have to get few technical details from your IT department in your office and then you can easily setup your work email account. You can alter settings to change the notification and message checking. It is very useful as most of the office email servers do not offer a version which is mobile friendly.

2. Make sure ‘Data Roaming’ is off

If you do not want to incur heavy charges for using data transmission while on roaming, adjust this option to be off. It can amount to huge charges if you are on an international trip. To adjust this setting :

-Tap on menu while on your home screen

-Choose Settings , then tap ‘Wireless and Networks’. Go to ‘Mobile Networks’

- See if data roaming is disabled. If not, disable it by taping the option.

3. Voicemail

Voicemail is also a feature which is missed by many android users. You can allow Google to handle your voicemail

Go to google.com/voice and register for the free service by Google 9but only for the voicemail feature)

You can now have computer generated transcripts of your voicemails delivered to your phone. You can also download mp3 version of your voicemails and explore all other options to integrate your voice mail with your android phone.

4. Install Dropbox

You might be using dropbox on your computer. Now, use it on your phone. Dropbox is a great service which provides you with 2 Gb of space on the cloud. Now you can install dropbox on your phone and now you can easily access the files from your computer. Just upload files from your computer to dropbox and using dropbox on your phone access them easily.

Go to Market app.

Search for dropbox and install it.

5. Add contacts to your home screen

You can easily add contacts to your home screen, so that with 1 tap you can call, sms, view facebook profile and do other task with your preferred contact.

- Press and hold your your finger on an empty spot on any of your home screens.

- Choose ‘Shortcuts’ from the pop up menu.

- Select ‘Contact’ and scroll to find you preferred contact.

Now you can get in tough with your contact with just 1 tap.

6. Install a better music player

Although android native music app is decent but there are wonderful apps in the market which you ought to try out. Some of them are : Tunewiki, doubletwist, etc.

You can search for the app in the market and install it. You’ll definitely prefer the new app over the native app. Another option could be to try out services like grooveshark, spotify etc. which stream music over the internet. (but these are paid apps)

7. Create a link for Directions Home

- Press and hold on a spot on your home screen.

- Choose ‘Shortcuts’.  Pick ‘Directions and Navigation’.

- Enter your home address in ‘destination field’.

- Name the shortcut as ‘Home’ or any other name you deem suitable

Now if you are lost and need directions back home, it is just 1 tap away.

For further exciting apps and tips and tricks for android , check out our android dedicated site androidhub

There are some known modes of sharing links from browser to your android device but if you have any other smart phone, this is the perfect option for you. It supports all major OS as well as supports all major browsers.

1. Phone Set Up

- Go to site to phone from your laptop and click setup with your phone.

- The site will generate a unique link and ask you to visit the link using your phone browser.

- Follow the instructions on the page which are adjusted as per you smartphone OS.

- After completing the setup, click on Complete Setup.

2. Browser Setup

There are two ways of sending links to your phone. Either you can go to site to phone website and use Quick Send and send the links to your phone. You don’t have to install an addon or create an account in this case.

Second method involves installing a plugin(IE 8/9 and chrome) or a bookmarklet(rest of browsers).

- Click on setup browser.

-Follow the instructions.

3. Sending the link to your phone

-After  completing the setup, whenever you are on a site the link of which you want on your phone. just right  click and select the option ‘Send Page to Phone’ or click on the icon in menu bar.

- Go to your phone’s app launcher and open the bookmark you created earlier.

- This will launch the webpage, the link of which  you just sent to your phone

You can also view the history of the sent links.

For some this might not be an interesting tool, but for some who are plagued by this issue this might be a welcome cure.

Read the rest of the post at our Android Focused Blog.