I have an expensive HTC Thunderbolt Smartphone from Verizon. The phone is great outside of the fact that it comes with a battery that dies within 3 hours when not connected to a power source, but that is another subject. I visited by local Verizon store once I noticed that, after about 5 months, I had only once had access to a 4G network — and that was in Philadelphia. They advised that north of a City here in New Jersey called Perth Amboy, everything is 4G and that it is coming this way “soon”.

So there I am at Newark Airport (yes, north of Perth Amboy) and I still only have a 3G connection. My Verizon representative would likely have told me to “reboot”.

When the plane landed in Austin, TX — and I took the phone out of “Airplane Mode” — wow, a 4G connection for only the SECOND time since I have owned this phone! On day 2 we traveled to San Antonio, and the whole way there we had lighting fast 4G connectivity. It was amazing, and even more amazing was the fact that for the first time something was as good as Verizon marketed it to be! The 4G connectivity was consistent throughout all of our travels in and around the greater Austin area.

Upon arrival back in the greater NYC area, sure enough back to 3G — and spotty 3G connectivity at that. To add insult to injury, when we turned on the radio the very first series of commercials included a Verizon classic, trumpeting their greatness as evidenced by their lighting fast 4G networks — in over 130 cities!

If only their 4G coverage was as broad as their marketing. Oh and about the battery. When I mentioned this to my Verizon rep, he said “well you can buy the enhanced battery for about 50 bucks — it has twice the milliamps and doubles duration for you”, to which my response was, “oh, so I will get 6 hours instead of 3?” — he just kind of looked at me, and nodded his head in agreement.

Do you think they calculated some percentage of those battery sales into their profit margins when they launched the product?