Feb 21, 2011 08:44 GMT  ·  By

It seems that Verizon customers who wish to buy a 4G compatible handset will have to wait a little longer. The carrier plans to release the first devices sometime during the last week of February.

Even though the HTC Thunderbolt was expected to be the first 4G smartphone available on the market, the manufacturer has decided to postpone the commercial availability of the device. Thus, the device has suddenly become “one of the first” 4G smartphones, instead.

Apparently, the reasons behind the postponing of the Thunderbolt are related to Skype, which was said not to be available with the smartphone at launch.

Rumors say that HTC plans to offer Verizon customers Skype video calls out-of-the-box, instead of releasing the functionality as a software update later on.

According to Droid-life, Verizon HTC Thunderbolt is expected to be available on the market on February 28th. Furthermore, it seems that the device will be launched along with Samsung's unnamed 4G LTE smartphone.

Verizon and HTC have both avoided to disclose any information regarding the Thunderbolt's price, but sources revealed two possible prices of the smartphone: the Best Buy Mobile Buyers Guide which shows the price tag as $299 and the Best Buy Weekly circular which shows the price tag as $249.99.

Announced at the 2011 Consumer Electonics Show in Las Vegas, HTC Thunderbolt is powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 Snapdragon processor complemented by an Adreno 205 GPU, and runs on Android 2.2 Froyo platform.

The device has a 4.3-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen with 16 million colors and 480 x 800 pixels resolution.

It also boasts an 8-megapixel camera with autofocus, dual-LED flash, geo-tagging, face detection, video recording capabilities (720p), as well as 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera.

Other key features of the phone include: LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity, DLNA function, 8GB of internal memory, 768 MB RAM, microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB, 32GB included) and GPS with A-GPS support.