I have had the HTC Thunderbolt on Verizon for several months and one feature that I have used only once on the device is the video recorder. The reason: it SUCKS! The video quality was (just) ok, it was was audio that was the worst, most garbled, audio I have ever heard on a video recording device! No exaggeration, no joke. Hands down the worst!
A month or so ago I installed the CyanogenMod ROM (7.1.1) and the video recording was no better, so I was sure it was the fact that there is only one mic on the device (or something like that) and wrote it off as a hardware thing.
Weeeeelllll, for some reason this weekend I decided to go with an unofficial MIUI port. For starters MIUI is a totally different Android experience that lies somewhere closer to iOS.
Here’s the thing though: THEY FIXED THE AUDIO IN THE VIDEO RECORDING APP!
YAY! Go MIUI. I cant wait till ICS comes out for the thunderbolt, but until then… here’s to MIUI!
A contract finally came up in my Verizon family plan, and since my wife got my Motorola Droid X recently, it was my turn to get a new phone. My first thought was: “How could I not get a 4G phone this time around (since its there)?!?”
Verizon has two to choose from, the HTC Thunderbolt and the Samsung Charge and the LG Revolution. I chose the Thunderbolt (TB) because I thought it had the best:
- device specs (camera, screen res., etc)
- form factor (by far)
- reviews
I bought the phone from Amazon since it was about $60 cheaper on there and I will avoid dealing with Verizon as much as possible (while I’m at it… same goes for Time Warner)!
The device is amazing. It has a great screen, great cameras (both front and rear), 4G is SUPER fast. Really impressive stuff! A real Gamechanger.
The devise is horrible. The battery drains faster that my kitchen sink! This is something that the WHOLE industry is going to have to deal with in what I will call the SmartPhone 2.0 Era.
The problem is two fold on this device. First, 4G is a HUGE power hog. So much so that after the novelty of it wore off, I switched to 3G only (I figure if I need speed, I’ll just turn it back on). Second, more pervasive in smart phones as a whole, if I want to take photos (with the awesome camera) or use my phone as a fitbit type device (because its silly to carry around Y.A.D.), or check in everywhere on Foursquare with the help of the onboard GPS, the paltry 1400 mAh battery just doesn’t cut it, AT ALL!
I had to buy this Seido 3200 mAh battery yesterday so I can get through the day (fingers crossed).
The rest of the review:
- browser: real nice.
- video recording: video quality is great, audio sucks. htc needs a second mic!
- HTC sense 3.0: loaded a BaMF ROM w/ HTC Sense 3.0, and while i don’t love sense in general, sense 3.0 is pretty neat.
- Desktop mode: Lame that the battery charger is on the side the phone needs to rest on for the built in kickstand. This is the worst engineered part of the devise (besides the battery choice :)
Also works to sync with my Android device! (wireless sync and/or an instapaper app would be best, but I’ll take what I can get!)
instapaper:
Ephemera will comfortably synchronize your ebook reader with Instapaper.com via USB. It works with the Amazon Kindle, Sony readers and pretty much any device capable of reading HTML, Mobipocket or EPUB files, which should cover quite a bit of ground.
It will fetch your news as single articles or in Instapaper’s premade bundles (Mobipocket & EPUB). Personally, I prefer the former. I can read an article, delete it on my reader, and during the next sync it’ll be archived on Instapaper.com.
Being the lazy guy, I’ve also implemented a feature I call “Plug, Sync & Go”: If you want it to, Ephemera will automatically start up, sync, and then unmount your reader when it detects the USB connection. My idea was that you’d configure the app once, and then just have it work — by simply connecting your reader.
Great idea: a Mac app to automatically synchronize Instapaper’s downloads to USB-mounted e-readers. I especially like the synchronization of deleted articles to your Instapaper Archive page.
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