HTC Thunderbolt vs. Droid Charge – Which has faster 4G LTE?

The Verizon 4G LTE network is pretty darn good but a new report from Root Metrics shows that not all devices are created equally. The company compared the HTC Thunderbolt and Samsung Droid Charge and found that one consistently got faster download speeds, even though both were using the same 4G LTE network.

The report said the HTC Thunderbolt had faster data speeds 80 percent of the time than the Droid Charge. The HTC product had an average download speed of 16.7 Mbps while the Samsung product had 11.4 Mbps download speeds. The test were handled in the Seattle area.

The funny thing is, even though the Samsung Droid Charge didn’t get as fast of download speeds as the Thunderbolt, 11.4 Mbps isn’t bad at all. In fact, I’d be very, very happy to get that on any 4G LTE device on an average basis.

Things also aren’t all bad for Samsung, as the Droid Charge was found to be the better phone for delivering text messages and for power consumption. While I think all of the 4G LTE phones have awful battery life, the Droid Charge has been the least awful I’ve seen. That’s something, I guess.

I love having 4G LTE speeds on my phone but the three phones currently available (Charge, Thunderbolt and Revolution) do have some flaws. That’s typical with the first generation of new devices though and I can’t wait for hardware that’s truly worthy of this network.

So, what do you think friends? Is download speed the most important thing to you in a 4G LTE device? What other factors come in your purchasing decision?

If you haven’t had a chance to do it yet, go ahead and read our full review of the HTC Thunderbolt and our opinion on the Samsung Droid Charge.

[Via Root Metrics (PDF)]