Well, another day, another HTC Thunderbolt rumor. Today's addition to the Thunder-rumor-dome is a little different, but don't worry - it's still pretty upsetting. A new Best Buy Ad has shown up with an advertised price of $299 for Verizon's debut 4G handset. Yuck. The Android Police team already thought $249 was a little steep, but $300 for a phone based on a platform that's been around more than 4 months worldwide?
Along with that, there's some delightful speculation about the Thunderbolt's release date having been pushed back to March 10th (which now seems fake). Hats off to Verizon and Best Buy for the best ongoing smartphone troll of all time.
Some have speculated that this could be due to a trademark fight between Apple and Verizon over "Thunderbolt", but a quick check of the USPTO reveals Verizon holds the trademark for the Thunderbolt name, so that's unlikely.
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8 Comments
A more likely scenario for the delay on releasing the Thunderbolt could be HTC and Verizon scrambling to make sure that it can run, or be made to run the new Android Netflix app that from all reports, requires hardware DRM on the phone itself. That new Netflix app is going to sell some phones, and it's going to make people steer clear of others that will never be able to run the app. I know I wouldn't make a 2-year investment in a new Android based phone without knowing it can run the Netflix app, and I'm sure that a lot of other people will be thinking the same thing...
Interesting. That would make sense, but there's also been speculation that the LTE radio is having problems switching from 4G to 3G, which is something a lot of people's phones will be doing quite often, most likely.
That'd be a pretty major(ly annoying) bug to ship with.
But the Netflix things sounds quite plausible, too.
That's it for me. I'll wait for the Bionic. $300 for a phone that has been pushed back over and over tells me Thunderbolt obviously has problems working with Verizon's system.
Paying that much money for an unproven, buggy phone is just plain stupid.
Time to look at the Atrix.
Meh, another day another rumor. Bionic will (if we are lucky) out in June, so I guess waiting another 4 months isn't so bad.
TB will be out next week, at this point IF it isn't BB will have run ads 3 weeks in a row with nothing to show for it. Its more than egg on their face that's for sure.
Will the BIONIC ship with an unlockable bootloader like the XOOM?
If so, I will pass on the Thunderbolt.
funny, I need a new phone, went and pre ordered a Thunderbolt. Then had time to think about it and finally saw the price, $299 for a freaking phone...... can you say NO. Im not sure what verizon is doing. But they seem to be in control of these ridiculous prices and Im getting pretty pissed.
Why can att have a HTC Inspire and charge $99 for it at best buy. I mean its brand new. Its almost, " ALMOST" the equivalent of the Thunderbolt. Correct me if Im wrong. But is the Thunderbolt worth $299..... No I think not. Thus I have decided to cancel the preorder and put that towards something else. More reasonable. I might be going back to ATT for the Inspire.
Inspire is only $400 _off_ contract.