Verizon’s much-anticipated HTC Thunderbolt – the first 4G LTE smartphone to hit the carrier – has finally been priced and dated. The 4G handset will arrive on March 17 for $249.99 with a new, two-year agreement; to sweeten the deal, Verizon will throw in complementary mobile hotspot use until May 15.
After that, using the Thunderbolt as a hotspot access point will cost $20 per month for 2GB of data. That’s on top of the regular (and mandatory) data and voice packages, which start at $29.99 and $39.99 per month respectively (for unlimited on-device 4G). Verizon reckons the LTE support is good for 5-12Mbps downloads and 2-5Mbps uploads in 4G coverage.
As for the phone itself, there’s a 4.3-inch WVGA touchscreen, 1GHz Snapdragon processor and 8GB of onboard storage, together with a pre-loaded 32GB microSD. Twin cameras – 8-megapixels on the back and 1.3-megapixels on the front – along with a built-in kickstand round things out. More details in our hands-on.