[taesrom]

Sorry I mixed up two phones. The 4 G phone is the HTC Thunderbolt while the HTC Incredible is only 3G so feel free to tell me about the Thunderbolt if you like. So my three options are HTC Thunderbolt, HTC Droid Incredible, or the Apple Iphone 4. Right now I'm leaning towards either the Incredible or the Thunderbolt depending on how much use I could actually get out of the 4G network. If I can barely even use it then there isn't much point paying extra for a 4G phone but either way the price difference is only $100 so it's not that big of a deal.

[Buhoutsoupfap]

My mom just got the Thunderbolt and it's apparently pretty badass. She says it's much faster online than her old Storm.

[viagsjicguara]

Droid Incredible and iPhone 4 are about to bite the dust. So, no.

The iphone 4 just came out last summer...are they really going to replace it so soon?

Oh right. It's apple. ****ers.

[longrema]

All of the current phones are obsolete pretty soon.

HTC Thunderbolt is a single-core 1GHz Snapdragon, which is pretty dated now.

Dual 1GHz Cortex A9-based chips (2-2.5x faster) are coming out now.

[tarmpriopay]

Isn't their battery life much worse though? I thought batteries weren't keeping up with processors.

They are comparable. They're on smaller manufacturing processes (40nm instead of 45) and are more efficient designs. They also can turn off/on cores instantenously, so most of the time only one core is still powered in a very low state. Additionally, sometimes more compute power = less battery use. Each individual core in an A9 is faster than an A8 core, for instance, at the same clock. And there are two of them now. If before it took ~1s of the chip in a fully powered state with 1 A8 to compute something and now it takes 0.3 seconds with 2 cores, it actually saves power.

iPad 1 is 1 Cortex A8 CPU, iPad 2 is 2 Cortex A9 CPUs. The battery life is virtually identical between them (actually the A9s seems to be slightly more efficient, in addition to more powerful).

[SM9WI8oI]

Isn't their battery life much worse though? I thought batteries weren't keeping up with processors.

CNET said they didn't think the battery life was that great on the Thunderbolt.

Asher, I really like Verizon's network but their phone choices don't seem to be all that great. Would you recommend waiting until the Iphone5 comes out in July or what about jail breaking a different CDMA phone not offered officially by Verizon?

[RealCHEAPsoftDOWNLOAD]

I wanted a phone now.


But I guess it's smartest to wait.

[Teomaderm]

OK, next question. If I wait for summer to buy a phone would the CDMA version of the Iphone 5 come out at the same time as the GSM version or would there be a delay since the CDMA version of the Iphone 4 was just released last month? Also which Android based CDMA phones will come up between now and summer? I'm trying to see if it's worth waiting 3-4 months or if I should just give in to my impulses and buy now. If something great is coming out this summer which is CDMA then I'll wait but if not...

[uncoosesoge]

Rumor is that the dual core Motorola Droid Bionic (a 4G LTE phone) comes out in mid April. Motorola's battery life is usually better than HTC.

[Grarypealumma]

my HTC evo is pretty gnarly. then again, i've rooted and running a custom rom that lets me tweak my clock speed in different states.

[Agrisalia]

my HTC evo is pretty gnarly. then again, i've rooted and running a custom rom that lets me tweak my clock speed in different states.

Would you say it was a gnarly root?

[Dpkefsuf]

The iPhone 5 will certainly be dual core (A5, which is a dual Cortex A9). It's already been verified in the iOS 4.3 release.

[Emapymosy]

The Droid Bionic looks really good.

I agree with Imran. If you are dead set on getting an LTE phone on Verizon, wait until the Bionic comes out. FWIW I went from a BB Storm to a Droid X last summer, only got a 1 year contract because I was thinking about getting an LTE phone this summer, but my experience has been such that I may wait well past the expiration date of my contract with my Droid X.

Of course I went from a shitty BB Storm to the Droid X, so it's all relative. I am never going to handle the BB OS again if I have my way.

[theonsushv]

My last mobile phone cost about A$40 including A$30 of credit. It has alll the features I need.
1. I can talk to people on it.
2. It accepts voice mail messages
3. It can send and receive text messages (I would rather it didn't have that feature but ....)
4. It is a prepaid so if lost one need not worry about the finder running up a huge bill for me