14 DAY TRIAL // Verizon's HTC Thunderbolt has been the target of many rumors, especially when it comes to the price and release date, both of which haven't been officially announced yet.
Only recently has Best Buy listed the 4G smartphone for $299.99 with a new two-year contract or $749.99 unlocked.
Initially, the national retailer was expected to sell the device for $249.99, but eventually decided to increase the price for unknown reasons.
According to the latest unconfirmed rumors, the HTC Thunderbolt is expected to be available for purchase on March 10, but Best Buy already accepts pre-orders.
Customers interested in pre-ordering the Thunderbolt are required to make a $50 deposit at the nearest Best Buy store.
Verizon has apparently delayed the launch of Thunderbolt invoking Skype-related issues. However, it seems that the carrier has now completely removed Skype from the phone's information page, which might be introduced at a later date.
Even though it's still unconfirmed, ongoing rumors suggest the HTC Thunderbolt may be launched along with Samsung's yet-unnamed 4G LTE smartphone.
Announced at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, HTC Thunderbolt has a 4.3-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen with 16 million colors support and a native 480 x 800 pixels resolution.
The Thunderbolt will be the first Verizon 4G-enabled device, and “one of the first” 4G smartphones on the market.
In terms of hardware, the Thunderbolt is a medium range smartphone, as it features a single 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 Snapdragon processor complemented by an Adreno 205 GPU, as well as an 8-megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash.
Unfortunately, the smartphone is not Gingerbread-enabled. Instead, it comes with Android 2.2 Froyo, but a future software upgrade might be possible.
The late launch of the Thunderbolt, as well as the rather high price might lower its appeal, especially that Best Buy has two cheaper 4G Android smartphones from different carriers, available for retail, HTC Inspire 4G and HTC EVO 4G.
