By 
One of our trusted tipsters has just forwarded along some pretty interesting material. The first thing to note is your looking at the HTC Thunderbolt, the phone that just can’t seem to pin down a release date, in hand. Speaking of the release date, our source is saying that March 3rd/4th looks like the most likely candidate, but that’s not the real reason he got in touch. That reason would be the results of some speed tests run on Verizon’s new 4G LTE network.
Our own speed tests using Verizon’s 4G LTE data stick connected to a laptop showed some insane speeds of over 20Mbps down, but it doesn’t look like we will see the same on the Thunderbolt. 10Mbps downlink and 11-12Mbps uplink were the average speeds our source was able to obtain. Of course, depending on your location and the strength of Verizon’s network in any given area, speeds are sure to vary. It will be interesting to see how speeds look once the Thunderbolt is out and VZW’s network becomes a bit more taxed. [Stay tuned, with fingers crossed we await some video of these speed tests in action.]
[Thanks to Michael Weston via Anonimac]
I think I could live with 10mbs. Pretty much way faster than what I get right now.
1st for the WIN!!!
Why the hell did they blur the guys hand?
If those are “true” speeds then why not show the full screen? Based upon that picture I doubt its authentic.
The last sentence in this news post says it all. Uplink and downlink speeds mean next to nothing without thousands of people taxing the network. Nice to see what theoretical speeds can be reached though! :)
To further elaborate on what I said in comment 3 those could just be wifi scores and not LTE scores. IF you want to be honest show the entire screen!
@monkey
Better question is why did the guy even feel the need to take a pic of his hand. There is more of his hand in the pic than there is phone. Can;t even see a good 1/3-1/2 of the screen. Bad pic is bad.
Why not take a better picture of the phone instead of his hand?
Maybe the slowest phone on the market by the time it’s released!So why care about speed when the unit doesn’t exist on market yet.Will be or can be just isn’t is!
WOW!! If it can average 10mbps when the network is actually being used, I will jump for joy.
I was just at BestBuy, and they are telling customers 3/17. Maybe St. Patrick will be able to cast all the bumps and glitches out of Thunderbolt’s release…
4G FTW! Verizon, where is HTC THUNDERBOLT???
@3 to hide fingerprints!!!!! Lol
Dayuuuuum! That is fast. LTE is the reason I’m thinking about moving to Verizon from T-Mo. Does anyone know offhand what the data cap situation is for Verizon? T-Mo has unlimited data but the speeds go down to super slo-mo, basically useless after the 5GB cap is reached. I usually it that stupid cap at 2 weeks and I need a truly unlimited plan.
Photoshop
love how the cut out where it tells u if its wifi or not ..i call bs
Rick, you dumbass.
Here’s a better picture of a speed test on a Thunderbolt. Speeds are about as expected. You’ll never hit peak speeds on a phone, that’s just unlikely.
http://theandroidsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/2358954391.jpg
When will the Thunderbolt be out? We have been waiting way too long!
When will the Thunderbolt be out? We have waited too long through all the announcements!
And.. the upload speeds in the pic don’t make sense.. and the upload speeds on the Phandroid tests, do make sense.
Yeah, theoretical and practical are big differences. So dont forget the added limits that verizon will most likely add to your connection speed. You are going to have the limits of verizon’s business model. Ex: fcc related law suit over their right to limit speeds of their competitors sites, etc. Kind of smells like aol speed throttleing. Who will earn that coveted crown? At&t or verizon?
Is that the only picture? Wtf? this was pointless then.
But I wonder how long speeds are going to be that good. I get about 8Mbps on my Evo. But Sprint has a high frequency and can hold a lot of traffic. Verizon doesn’t, let’s see what happens. …yea i’m being bias.
Now we know the REAL TRUTH BEHIND THIS DELAY… WHICH VERIZON IS NOT TELLING US THE CONSUMER…..READ THIS FROM ENGADGET. COM….. HTC Thunderbolt said to have terrible battery life, might explain delay?
By Chris Ziegler posted Feb 25th 2011 7:42PM
We’re hearing from… well, let’s call them “people familiar with the matter” that HTC’s Thunderbolt — a phone that’s supposed to be Verizon’s first with LTE — is experiencing positively miserable battery life that’s making it difficult for testers to avoid carrying a second phone around as a backup. How bad? Two to three hours from full to empty in some cases. Of course, we wouldn’t be surprised if battery life was really bad with the LTE radio left on —- but the word on the street is that the power situation is largely responsible for the delays we’ve been seeing. In fact, our source tells us the phone is currently working on its sixth retail delay at the moment. More on this situation as we get it.
Update: We’ve just heard from another trusted tipster that there’s definitely a new firmware in the works to address battery life and signal issues (which — you guessed it — are interrelated). Thanks, HTC Kid!
Even without the 10mb, Darklay was way faster than Rick.
My Verizon Fascinate gets 6 hours max with average use, oh and Rick… YOU FAIL!
Those just show upload speeds! Where are the download speeds?
saying “first!” means you’re in your parent’s basement waiting for your raid to begin
I have been waiting for verizon to come out with a forward facing camera smartphone forever. I currently have a five year ond very dumb phone.
I wait and wait. Should I just suck it up and get another smartphone and just be done?
All this tmobile and verizon speed is great (although useless for tmobile since their coverage is such a joke),, and now sprint is quitting wimax (rumor). So what about AT&T, where is their 4g and what are it’s theoretical speeds and which devices are compatible?
my fascinate lasts all day, when i first got it the battery didnt last very long at all because i was playing so much with it but now that i have it figured out it seems to do real good
So easy to tout high speeds when noone else in the vicinity uses the network its on. When Verizon gets 7 different popular LTE devices lets see how real the speeds are real time speeds will probably be half of what you see here if which would make it on par with t-mobile.
@rich. You failed. I’ll be the first to tell you are a cock sucker! Bahaha.
Heard from VZW rep yesterday. that Thunderbolt is not going to be released until end of March or beginning of April.
I would like to see what vzw lte speed ramp up timeline is. Tmobile will be pushing 84mbs by years end and I have a reliable source that the towers are already being upgraded.
I get good service with tmo so I’m looking forward to the faster speeds. But if vzw lte is going to exceed that I’m open to a switch. I need the speed for my work since everything is web based.
Haha tmobile samsung galaxy s 4g gets that average. So that means when tmobile will upgrade their network to 42+ well get even higher speeds then verizon, and then when tmobile will upgrade to 84+ ill laugh some more. Tmobile, cheaper, faster, and their hspa+ phones were available since october 2010.
battery sucks because on sense
WTF is the problem with HTC this year? last year they kicked ass with the Evo, Incredible and Nexus1, this year they haven’t released anything worthwhile. Is the Thundebolt really going to be that much better than the Evo or Inspire? The specs look awfully similar and It’s taking them forever to release it. If the Thunerbolt really isn’t coming out until late March or early April then it’s in alot of trouble if not DOA.
I had the Htc Incredible, had to do 2 system reboots, because the the battery, pawned it off on my w
ife. And got the X. HTC it has been long reported from consumer test to have the worst battery life of all smart phones. Motorola being among the best. With that said, wait for moto’s 4 g coming out 2qtr.
Non trust worthy picture. Need to see if the phone is actually connected to the network or on Wifi. Show the whole screen.
aberkae
Tmobile is garbage. end of story.
And those of us that followed the updates for the incredible now how reliable michael weston can be. His credibility was shot a long long time ago. In a galaxy far far away! Sorry had to.
@Aberkae,
TMobile cheaper, faster, an almost zero reception if you step outside a major city. Fine for some. NOT for most.
@Matt
I am actually in my mom’s attic. It’s much warmer up here.
@bela
thats total bullshit becaus i live on long island and work in VERMONT have t mobile -switched to verizon had to go back 2 t mobile because the service in vermont was better and i held service the whole ride from nyc>stamford ct>bridgeport ct>new heaven>hartford ct> springfield mass>brattleboro all hspa+ not sure ab bratt that might have been 2g edge
while with verizon id lose service numerous times during the bi-weekly trip and had only had 3g 50% of teh time
so verizon can shove it
and if u honestly think that [pic is legit your a total moron !!!!!!!!
there is no need to cover up half the screen im surprised they even show this on phandroid its total bullshit !
as far as being faster and faster i dont see a need for it
my mt4g is a 14.4 and i avergae ab 6mbs down and 3 up
and i never wait for a thing ! everrrr im never saying to myself oh this is taking forever everything is instant app downloads youtube pages ..website loads and im a heavyyy data user 5gigs a month or more so greattt t mob is going 2 80mbs i just dont see why ???????
Fuckin a Richard. You are a complete moron. If u finish that same engadget post that u are reading u would notice that it talks about how horrible the EVO was on wimax as well… Where is your quote on that one you ignorant cumdumpster? Wha?huh? Oh you conveiniently forgot to mention that. Of fucking coarse you douche bag. You are without a doubt the largest biggest troll I have ever encountered while reading a news site. You are so predictable with your stupid ass EVO rules and sprint rules and wimax rules. If wimax is so good why is sprint trying to ditch it for LTE? Answer that tool! And so predictable you are with your sprint and EVO comments. I have only seen you post something other than that maybe twice. Last thing, Richard yarnell, you are so dumb, you are really dumb, for real! He’s climbing on your news post ,trolling your site up, hide ya phones, hide ya wife. Peace you little bitch
@bela- bingo! Tmobile has great speed, but the phones are virtually useless if you aren’t outside, on a hill, in the middle of a city. I never had a dropped call, but I still prefer AT&T because (at least in Texas), AT&T works everywhere and tmobile works nowhere. Literally everywhere my wifes mytouch 4g either doesn’t get voice or doesn’t have data (which is very often) my AT&T phone has full everything. It is honestly offensive how awful tmobiles coverage is, and that’s coming from years of experience traveling all over America. What good is speed if you can only use it at a house?
gonna be the same as t-mobile once everyone is on the network. Pisses me off that the NHL CenterIce app is only on Verizon when they are just now coming out with their first ‘4G” speeds and Tmobile has had 4g for months. Stupid Verizon always trying to make it a monopoly.
@davis You need to check tmobile’s coverage map. It is the most forthrigh/truthful of any coverage map I have looked at. I have never lacked coverage in any area it has stated it covers. That goes for data as well. I jumped into tmobile knowing full well that some areas I travel through will lack coverage, and yep, I had no coverage there. But, where I live and work has HSPA and complete coverage. I have free tethering and 450 voice minutes which I never exceed, and I pay less than $70 per month. No one can beat that. N1 user.
That photo, with that placement of the Android, looked kind of dirty. At least on the thumbnail.
@Ksizzle9 you a complete peice of garbage!! You and all of you XDA boyz that like to eat eachothers ANUS
@davis here in salt lake, the only (literally) place i dont get full service or 4g speeds is at my parents house… but surprisingly no one ever gets any service at my parents house… At&t Verizon, Sprint… hmm i sense a conspiracy
T-Mobile? That’s a joke, right? They don’t have the spectrum to do 8Mbps, let alone 20! That’s why they aren’t even bothering with real 4G, they have no frequencies to put it on.
Sprint owns the most mobile broadband spectrum, though in the not-so-perfect 2500Mhz bands. Verizon owns a lot of “A+” frequency (penetrates walls for better coverage). AT&T has a decent amount. T-Mobile has nearly NONE.
They can upgrade their network all they want, but since they’re going to have more customers per frequency than their competition, it wont even be a close race in terms of speed.
Davis – I have TMO and go on roadtrips quite a bit. So far, there’s only a couple of places I’ve had no signal and those places were literally out in the middle of nowhere, not a tower to be seen for miles. Other than that though, I’ve had no problem with calls or data, even places where TMO’s coverage map says there shouldn’t be any signal.
Donnydon, you must have the EVO as well. Xda boys? With out the Xda boys how would you ever have root on anything?? That’s it you wouldn’t. I don’t troll anyone, anywhere, if u would read the post of Richards you would be able to see who is the troll. You guys must be a couple of middle schoolers. Or at least you think at that level.
Could we get a moderator in here? There are some seriously erroneous and hateful comments degrading the discussion here.
I would Gladly leave Richard alone if he would stop trolling every post that doesn’t praise the EVO or sprint. I’ve been waiting on this to happen for some time now. I thoroughly enjoy coming in here and enjoying normal convo about the tech world. I’m just sick of Richard coming in here with these idiotic comments. This is one of the best sites around for breaking news and I’ll continue to come here. If you look back to the last several months of post you will see just how consistent Richard is with the seriously stupid and childish comments. I would just like to read these post and see something positive and intelligent.
I get those download speeds on my Galaxy S 4G. No where near those upload speeds though!
@Ksizzle9 every post you make has hate in it!!! Opinions dont equal trolling!!!!! The site says LEAVE A COMMENT so we do!!!
And when I say XDA Boyz im not talking about the hackers…im talking about those guys in the android forums that blow up an call people a troll just for saying what they believe.
Ive done 11.2 down and 2.3 up on Sprint’s 4G service (Wimax) in NYC. Not saying that it blos anything away but it was a very respectable number running my Evo Shift.
donnydon, thats stupid, none of them have “hate” just calling richard out for his trolling. which its pretty clear that you are a evo owner or sprint customer and if had been around here as long as me you would realize that im not lying, he never has anything positive to say unless its praise for the evo or wimax, it said leave a comment so thats what we were doing, now sit there and tell me that this has hate in it.
going to try out atrix wondering if the wait for verizon is worth it. how much faster is hspa than lte
Useless without proof of cell data connection.
I’m with HTC EVO 4g big dogs on the block , I just called Verizon and they ain got no HTC thunderbolts so keep crying like cry baby’s we still the number 1 big dogs WOOF WOOF WOOF…..WOOF
HTC EVO WINNING…..U TROLS , CHEAP BAND AID TRICKS I PHONE, DROP CALL AT&T , BOOT LICKING TMOBLE AND 4G WISHING VZ ,HTC EVO IS THE ADONUS NOT THE ANUS , IS THE MILK NOT THE LOSER U SERVE…IM GOING TO CALL MY GODDESS NOW LOOT OLOGIST U TROLS…
I have EVO 4G. If I can pick up 4G. The average speed is between 2 mbps to about 8 mbps so this doesn’t seem too out of whack since LTE is similar to Wimax. If they can have the get the towers in place and can cover 90% of the area pick’s up 4G or Wimax it would be wonderful.
HSPA is faster but again coverage is what you need to worry about. If you stay in bigger cities you will be fine but every where else its crap.
I hear a lot of people bitch about AT&T but fact is I have only dropped calls in tunnels and nowhere else. And as far as a truly unlimited data plan, I went over 15gb last month with AT&T and my network speeds never dropped, like T-mobile likes to screw over their “unlimited” users.
Iess i have verizon currently the increadable it works flawl
get the point
There are approximately 72 posts from people that don’t have a clue. VZW has achieved 80Mb/s in the lab with current LTE network. VZW has stated publicly that on a fully loaded network that LTE will average 5-12Mbs down and 2-5Mbs Up. I have LTE Modem and use it everyday. There are times I see 20Mbps and even reached 33Mbps on the downlink with uplink speeds of 10-12Mbps. I have also seen 3Mbps down and 800Kbps up. The point being that my average experience will be well within the range quoted by VZW whether on a modem or a Smartphone. So, to all of you responders with your fanboy agendas that spout off w/out real experience or knowledge… don’t say anything unless its a fact. BTW, VZW LTE blows T-Mobile, Sprint & AT&T offerings away in terms of throughput and latency… and that is coming from an phone manufacturer rep who tests their 4G equipment on all networks. Finally, someone brought up T-mobile’s plans for next gen HSPA+ and how it will blow away the comp? Not true. The speeds they promote are lab speeds 24Mbps and 42Mbps – never realized on a network. They will see their average 3-5Mbps improve to 5-7Mbps on the downlink with no improvement to latency. You talk like only T-mobile has an upgrade path. Here’s a little clue. Every carrier has an upgrade path. In the LTE world, VZW can move from current 2×2 MIMO configuration to 4×4 MIMO and double their speeds as well. Also, T-Mobile fanboys how does it feel when your carrier is rated last in call quality by JD Powers. Why don’t you just admit you all throw BS out to cover for the fact that you can only afford T-Mobile.