Don Goes Android.

[TheForce]

Yes, I've been thinking about this for over a month now and when I found out it was unlikely I'd have a 5spot for LTE for my trip to Vegas in a couple weeks I decided to go for an early upgrade of my htc TP2 to an htc Thunderbolt.

Went to the Verizon store and played with one for about 2 hours, but when I pulled up the speedtest.net and it loaded fast, I was jaw dropped astonished with the results- 27.45Mbs down and 1.77Mbs up. I ran it several times and the Washington DC server point was giving me that average. Then I tried some places around the world and the slowest I could get was 7.6Mbs down and 1.2 up.
Now I was just wasting my time so I asked the sales rep if he could transfer my contacts for free and he said no problem. 20 minutes later I was switched over to the Thunderbolt on LTE. Yeah baby! This is cool having the same overall response on downloads for my phone, and tethering to my ipad in the field now as I get with Comcast at home. It comes with the first month free tethering and is still open to 3rd party apps for tethering. My data plan was transferred to the Thunderbolt as grandfathered unlimited for a two year contract and will not expire because I upgraded.

Looks like I'll be on the fast track learning curve now as I port many of my apps to Android equivalent. Good thing is that some, like GPS navigation and stock tracking and weather comes with it and is similar to my old phone.

Phone has 40Gb of storage which is more than double my old phone.

 

[HIFI]

Welcome to android! keep us informed on the performance of the thunderbolt, I've been thinking about a move from my droid 1 to the thunderbolt.

 

[dfergie]

Welcome to the droids Don!

 

[TheForce]

It must be me but I downloaded the speedtest.net android app and now I can't get into the base site. I even tried to uninstall the app and I am still taken to an install page. So, I reinstalled it. Now I discover this app gives me screwy results and it won't permit e-mailing or publishing the test results.

The results seems to be a high reading and the upload and download results are backwards. e.g. The Chicago server setting gives me 38Mb upload and 8.5Mb download. This is nuts but consistent with each test. I went to several other speed test sites and get more realistic results. speakeasy gives me 16Mb down and 1.4 Mb upload into Chicago server.

Anyone out there with an android speedtest.net app? what do you see?

 

[Steve Mehs]

Congratulations Don! I thought you’d go the ‘other’ way and get the fruit phone. The Android platform is one of great fun and experimenting. I see the Thunderbolt it’s running Froyo, too bad it didn’t come with Gingerbread, as 2.3 is a bit more slick and things like the Gallery and Camera apps are much improved. I installed Gingerbread on my Evo the other day but went back to Froyo as I cannot stand Vanilla Android. I need HTC Sense, everything else just falls short. You’re getting some pretty awesome speeds, I’m hoping Sprint goes LTE one day. It's nice to see that HTC has another phone out with a kickstand, as stupid as I thought it was at first, the kickstand is a great little feature.

As for the speedtest.net app, I’ve never had a problem with it sending results. But I don’t actually email myself the results. I usually just get the URL of the PNG image associated with the particular test and hand type it in. I also have no problem going to speedtest.net in my browser and running a test, but I find it harder to navigate then just using the app.

Have fun with Android and remember, ‘Everything iDon’t, Droid Does’. The sky is the limits with Android, no one can tell you want you can and cannot do with your phone.

 

[TheForce]

Actually, I only ever planned to get the iphone LTE version for my wife when that version happens. I had always planned on staying with a phone with a user swappable battery. Funny, but that little feature meant more to me than any iOS or Android OS. In an emergency, the last thing I want is a dead battery. Plus LTE speed is important this year as I don't want to buy into last year's speed technology. To jump in before my scheduled upgrade date cost me $20.

I'm presently working on the laptop ap now for managing files on my Tbolt. Lots to learn!

 

[HIFI]

speedtest has been acting very strange since they updated the site, I get weird readings now on laptop and droid.

 

[DetFan]

I almost used my upgrade on this phone, but that battery, Man I just cannot deal with phones that are packed with all of these features yet they put a 1400 mAh battery in it. Guess I will wait and see when the Bionic hits..

 

[TheForce]

The guy at Verizon says they have an extended battery but it uses a thicker back. I plan on getting a second standard battery.

Understand I've had very limited experience with it but so far it has about the same run time as my TP2 which uses a 1750mAh. I ran it yesterday, twice, down to the 15% warning and that was about 3 and a half hours. One of thiose I had about 40 minutes of talk time but the rest was surfing the web and watching youtube videos as well as one HD video all pounding the LTE network. The back did get warm to the touch. The charging cord has a tag that says full charge takes 4 hours and that's what I did before each burn test. My leather case has a holster slot for one htc thin style battery.
There are some settings to save battery life but I haven't looked into that yet.

Also, the salesman said that the tethering is not really meant for use on battery and their tests showed tethering will reduce battery life to about 20 minutes. He said if I plan on using it for tethering, I best plan on having it on a charger for those times.

 

[TheForce]

Been on ipad tethered to Tbolt for an hour now. Battery is down to half on the scale. I downloaded about 2 gb of HD videos and been surfing with ipad. Not bad time on the battery alone. The web content load hasn't been unusually slow during the download either. It really seems strange having a phone with such uncompromised speed.

I'll stay on it until I get to the 15% warning.


Here's a good testimony of the speed of this LTE? While downloading another HD podcast, i went on sling box and watched some CNN news in HD and it streamed without any buffering. The battery is quite warm but i'm at 90 minutes now of tethering with no real trouble. This is much better than what the salesman said to expect.


Finally hit 2 hrs and 10 minutes run time on LTE with streaming video from Slingbox and doing simultaneous downloads. I shut it down when I hit 15% warning. I'm sure I can live with that.


I ordered a 1600mAh battery from Seidio so I should be good with that as a backup.