I went to our local VZW store to review the new phones to decide on a new smart phone. I talked to the very helpful and unusually knowledgeable sales rep about the differences between the Droid X and the Thunderbolt, which hadn't been released yet. I decided on the Droid X as there were a lot of unanswered questions about the TBolt and the sales rep told me that if I wanted to exchange the phones when the TBolt came out it would not be a problem. A week later, I went back to the VZW store to take a look at the TBolt. Unfortunately, I spoke to another sales rep. It was discovered that the phones supposedly are the exact same except the amount of memory in the Tbolt, the second camera, and the 4G access. I decided to exchange the phone.
The unspoken:
The Tbolt is not the exact same phone with upgrades. It does not operate the exact same. Now I have a laundry list of problems with the phone. I called the VZW store I exchanged the phones through, and asked them to go back to the old phone. They told me I was out of luck, despite none of the four associates who set up the phone telling me there was no way back. I talked to VZW National Customer service who pretty much told me the same thing. You can't go back, despite the fact that I now have a phone I absolutely hate. VZW has released this phone with all of these issues, to include lack of support for their own Verizon V Cast Media Manager and Verizon's mobile app. How is it possible that they could introduce a phone with a total lack of technical and software support. Even better was that information was conveniently omitted during my transaction otherwise I would have stuck with the phone I knew I liked.
The problems:
The car dock is cheap and it requires a "hammer" to get the phone in, and a "pry bar" to get it out. Once you exit out of the car dock app to access other apps on the phone, you can't re engage without muscling it out of the dock and back in. The auto rotate feature has stopped functioning for the home screens. When I plug the usb cable into the computer to link the two devices, everything freaks out and locks up. I get several drive error messages, and VZW Media Manager doesn't recognize the phone as a Tbolt, instead it shows up as an Incredible. The headphone jack is touchy, sometimes it plays in stereo, sometimes not. When I finally got the computer and phone to communicate, it duplicated everything several times, so what started as about a hundred pictures turned into 600. The weather widget gives me the weather for several surrounding cities as the current location.
Overall, if you have the ability to stay away from this piece of junk, pick something else. 4G isn't as great as everybody says, and VZW isn't anywhere close to getting that network fully up and running. There are several phones on the market that function much better and have much better support. This is the second time VZW reps have talked me into a phone I hate, and I will seriously be considering a carrier change after several loyal years with them.
