Gingerbread Headed to HTC Thunderbolt Q2 2011

One of our readers reached out to HTC over an issue they were having with Bluetooth on their new HTC Thunderbolt and received a response back with some information that should make everyone’s weekend 100% better.  How does Q2 of this year for a Gingerbread update sound?

The HTC rep also dropped a list of Android 2.3 features in her email, but we’re thinking she may have just pulled them from an official 2.3 update list because she included NFC in there.  As far as we know, the TBolt doesn’t have an NFC chip in it, but either way, the Q2 announcement is what we really care about.

Soooo…some time in the next 3 months, you should have GB.  I guess this really isn’t surprising since the majority of HTC’s new phones will all launch with Android 2.3, but we always love confirmations from HTC reps.

Check out the full email after the break.  

Dear John,

Congratulations on obtainng the HTC Thunderbolt. We understand how important it is that your device meets your needs.

John, Bluetooth manufacturers make their devices to be compatible with our phones. We do not make our phones to be compatible with the thousands of Bluetooth devices in the market. Bluetooth manufacturers conduct the testing to see if complete compatability is achievable. It is the software in the Bluetooth devices which dictates whether they work or not. Our software in the phones, ensures that the phone can pair and turn on the Bluetooth. Anything else, goes to the Bluetooth manufacturer for troubleshooting. You would need to speak with the car manufacturer to ensure that full compatibilty is achievable. The Thunderbolt does have a text to speech feature.

We are excited to announce that the Thunderbolt will receive the Gingerbread (Android 2.3) update in Q2 2011. Stay tuned for details as we get closer to the update availability.

New User Features
UI refinements for simplicity and speed
Faster, more intuitive text input
One-touch word selection and copy/paste
Improved power management
Control over applications
Internet calling
Near-field communications
Downloads management

Enhancements for gaming
Performance
Native input and sensor events
Open API for native audio
Native graphics management
Native access to Activity lifecycle, window management
Native access to assets, storage
Robust native development environment

New forms of communication
Internet telephony
Near Field Communications (NFC

Rich multimedia
Mixable audio effects
Support for new media formats
Access to multiple cameras

New Platform Technologies
Media Framework
New media framework fully replaces OpenCore, maintaining all previous codec/container support for encoding and decoding.
Integrated support for the VP8 open video compression format and the WebM open container format
Adds AAC encoding and AMR wideband encoding
Linux Kernel
Upgraded to 2.6.35
Networking
SIP stack, configurable by device manufacturer
Support for Near Field Communications (NFC), configurable by device manufacturer
Updated BlueZ stack
Dalvik runtime
Dalvik VM:
Concurrent garbage collector (target sub-3ms pauses)
Adds further JIT (code-generation) optimizations
Improved code verification
StrictMode debugging, for identifying performance and memory issues
Core libraries:
Expanded I18N support (full worldwide encodings, more locales)
Faster Formatter and number formatting. For example, float formatting is 2.5x faster.
HTTP responses are gzipped by default. XML and JSON API response sizes may be reduced by 60% or more.
New collections and utilities APIs
Improved network APIs
Improved file read and write controls
Updated JDBC
Updates from upstream projects:
OpenSSL 1.0.0a
BouncyCastle 1.45
ICU 4.4
zlib 1.2.5

We apologize John, for any inconvenience that you may have experienced.

To send a reply to this message or let me know I have successfully answered your question log in to our ContactUs site using your email address and your ticket number XXXXXXXXXXX.

Sincerely,

Carol

HTC

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