In our tests, I got eight hours of 3G talk time with the Thunderbolt, six hours of video playback time, and only 2.5 hours of LTE streaming. So what's an Internet fan to do?
HTC and Verizon will offer a very high-capacity extended battery, the companies told me. The 2750 mAh battery is nearly twice the capacity of the Thunderbolt's built-in 1400 mAh unit. The big battery will cost $49.99 and will be available very soon, said Pat Bucci, Verizon's director of accessory products.
The new battery makes the phone about an ounce heavier than its existing 6.5 ounces, and it comes with a new back that makes the phone deeper as well, Bucci said.
"We want customers who are power users, that are going to have the hotspot on all day, to just go," he said.
Along with the extended battery, Verizon will offer a $59.99 desktop dock, which can charge both the phone and a second standard or extended battery at once. A second standard battery will cost $39.99.
The Thunderbolt will also be the first Verizon phone to support wireless charging. In April, Verizon will start selling a Qi-compatible back and charging pad for the Thunderbolt. The back will cost $29 and the pad will cost $69; it's fully compatible with Energizer's inductive charging products.
You could also go for a third-party charging solution like the Energizer Energi To Go power pack. The Energizer XP4001 ($53.47 at Amazon) weighs about five ounces and holds 4000 mAh of power, which should be enough to LTE all day.
And while you can't turn off 4G here, you can use our tips on how to improve your Android phone's battery life with the HTC Thunderbolt or any other Android phone.
If you saw our HTC Thunderbolt review video a few days ago you’ve likely already noted that one of the weakest points of this device is its pitiful battery life. Sporting a slightly dissapointing 1400mAh battery, it’s no surprise that the Thunderbolt’s 4.3” screen, 1GHz processor, 4G connectivity and other high end hardware and software leave you carrying your charger with you for extended trips. Today we’ll show you how to maximize your shiny new Thunderbolt’s battery life so that you can get much more than the 6-8 hours of usage I got without optimization.
Turn off 4G when not in use. Even if you don’t life in a 4G covered area, the Thunderbolt’s LTE radio is constantly searching for a 4G signal. Turning it off when it won’t be in use for long periods of time [like gaming during a car ride, etc] can really help. Here are instructions provided by Taylor from Phonedog on how to turn 4G on and off.
Open the dialer, dial
Select Phone information
Scroll down to “Set preferred network type,” select “CDMA auto (PRL)”
Press the back button
This is just as easily undone as it is done. To turn the LTE radio back on:
Dial *#*#4636#*#*
Select Phone information
Select “LTE mode”
Press the back button
Repeat the first two steps
Select “CDMA + LTE/EvDo auto”
Press the back button
Also note that you can add a this number as a contact and add a direct dial shortcut to your homescreen for one-tap access to this feature. Perhaps a future OTA update will include a 4G switch widget?
The Thunderbolt sports a massive 4.3” 800×480 SuperLCD screen that drains a lot of power. It is arguably the biggest battery drainer in any smartphone, Android or not. Adding a shortcut or widget to your homescreen to toggle brightness can help out a lot. Even enabling automatic brightness over full-time maximum brightness can make a difference in battery life. This tip is likely gave the most significant improvement in battery life.
HTC Sense 2.0 provides a section specifically for Location Settings that has a few toggles your Thunderbolt’s Google Location services, Standalone GPS services, and VZW Location services. At most you only really need one of these on [perhaps if you’re navigating or using for location] but using all 3 at once is simply a battery killer and disabling one or two can’t hurt!
Turning off Adobe Flash 10.2 may make you cringe but think about it – how often are you browsing a site that’s made up entirely of flash? You may do a lot of your news reading in Google reader or watch most of your online video using the stock YouTube app for Android. If you do love Flash you may want to keep this on; if you don’t however, you’ll see a boost in browsing performance, which translates into less time spent waiting for pages to load, which in the end means less CPU cycles and less battery usage.
Last resorts: If you still can’t get the battery life you desire after calibrating your battery and following all these tips you can try apps like Juice Defender, which attempts to disable unused settings/services to fully maximize battery life, though I found that it didn’t provide much more than a few extra minutes of usage at the cost of using up RAM in the background. You can also invest in an extended battery for the Thunderbolt; there are a few making their way around the market new that can be picked up for under $100 that nearly double the stock battery’s 1400mAh rating.
BONUS: Quicksettings is a free application available in the Android market that provides quick access to a lot of features mentioned in this article. A long press of the search button and you have brightness, volume control, GPS and more all at your fingertips.
I’d estimate that fully and carefully utilizing all of the first 4 tips, any heavy Thunderbolt user will notice a significant improvement in the performance of the stock battery – 2 full days of battery? No problem! *A lot of these tips will work for any Android smartphone, so feel free to use them at your own discretion. Note that nothing was said about ‘task managers’ or ‘task killers’ because of their debatable effectiveness. If you’ve noticed a battery life boost on your old phone using a task killer then by all means continue using one!
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Computerworld - Independent speed tests for the HTC ThunderBolt smartphone on the Verizon Wireless LTE 4G network show it runs many times faster than on older 3G networks for Web browsing, emailing, streaming video and music and playing online games.
At the same time, though, its battery life comes up shorter -- sometimes much shorter -- than advertised, according to initial Computerworld field tests.
In four field tests over several days, battery life on a review unit of the ThunderBolt averaged only 4 hours and 22 minutes between charges, two hours below the advertised 6.3 hours for the device's 1400 mAh battery.
The faster battery drain came from relatively heavy video and music downloading, though the tests also included typical voice calls, texting, e-mailing and Web browsing tasks.
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The testing was done as the phone occasionally moved between 4G LTE and 3G cell zones in the Boston suburbs.
Four hours and 22 minutes of battery life is not out of line with the findings of various online reviewers who also pushed the ThunderBolt by receiving heavy downloads of music and video, as well as using it for videoconferencing on LTE.
Some bloggers have offered workarounds -- by shutting off the LTE connection or buying a longer-life battery.
However, our experience with the ThunderBolt found that even in 3G zones, the battery life can be quickly sapped by multimedia data. (The ThunderBolt's voice traffic runs over CDMA for now, separate from LTE data traffic.)
In a separate test of battery life, Computerworld also tried out ThunderBolt's Mobile Hotspot capability. Using the ThunderBolt as a Wi-Fi hotspot, we started with five devices connected over Wi-Fi to the ThunderBolt. The smartphone was also connected to the LTE cellular network in Framingham, Mass.
In the mobile hotspot test, the ThunderBolt's 1400 mAh battery was drained to less than 15% in just two hours. That quick battery drain may be why Verizon suggests connecting the smartphone to a wall charger when using it as a mobile hotspot. (A warning on the phone says: "Mobile Hotspot may use more battery. You may want to connect the phone to a power supply."
HTC and Verizon don't appear to have any official statement of ThunderBolt's battery life when used as hotspot without a power connection.
LTE, battery background
Several early testers of the ThunderBolt found LTE speeds are the device's most striking feature. Network World reviewers reported an average of 12 Mbit/sec downlink speeds on five tests over LTE in Framingham, Mass., while a Computerworld reviewer got 16 Mbit/sec download speeds and 19 Mbit/sec upload speeds in the New York City area.
That Computerworld reviewer found the LTE speeds were 20 times faster than Verizon's 3G speeds, which are far more widely available than LTE. LTE networks are now available in some 40 cities.
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