HTC Thunderbolt Cell Phone Review

Multimedia

The HTC Thunderbolt has an eight-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, as shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10: The back of the HTC Thunderbolt

You will notice that the camera lens and flash are both recessed. If the lenses are flush with the back, they can become easily scratched, so this is a very nice feature. In this Figure, you can also see that the top three-quarters of the back is covered in a soft-touch black finish. Just under that is a brushed metal kickstand that can be used to keep the phone upright. The open kickstand with the Google name engraved on it is shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11: The kickstand

Under the kickstand is the phone speaker. It is quite loud and more than adequate for normal use, but it sounds even better when the kickstand is open. Also, unlike the HTC Surround that we recently reviewed, the videos and music display properly on the screen when in the horizontal position.

The only design flaw we found with the HTC Thunderbolt was that setting the phone on the kickstand made it impossible to plug in the charger at the same time. As you can see in Figure 12, the charging port is directly in line with the kickstand.

Figure 12: The charging port

Although others have reported poor battery life on the HTC Thunderbolt, we found it to be adequate for a day’s worth of average use with the brightness at midrange and Bluetooth turned off. If you want to keep Bluetooth turned on and/or you are a very heavy user, you want to get a car charger, carry a portable battery-powered micro-USB charger, and/or a spare battery. The HTC Thunderbolt captures very good photos with good color representation. While there is no macro mode, there is an added feature that lets you tap the area of the screen that you want to focus on. The camera then accommodates you with its autofocus, which is quite speedy. The dual LED flash is good for average conditions, but, as with most cameras of this type, not bright enough for low light conditions.

Videos can be taken at resolutions up to 1280 x 720 with 28 frames-per-second, but you cannot record in stereo like you can on the Motorola Droid X. However, the HTC Thunderbolt di
d a good job of sound quality while capturing video. The noise cancellation for background noise was much better than most other cell phones.

There is also a 1.3-megapixel camera on the front of the HTC Thunderbolt. Yet, currently, neither Google Talk nor Skype support video calling on this phone. We expect, however, that they will in the near future. In the meantime, we tried an app called Tango that worked pretty well.