Today marks the release of the hotly anticipated HTC Thunderbolt, the first smartphone with onboard LTE support.  Verizon Wireless is offering this phone for $249 with a two-year contract.

But two online Verizon Wireless resellers – LetsTalk.com and WireFly – are offering the brand new Android smartphone for $50 less, $199 with a new service agreement. 

While the HTC Thunderbolt is LTE ‘4G’ ready, LTE is only currently available in select locations.  If you don’t live in an area with LTE service, the Thunderbolt will use Verizon’s existing 3G wireless network for data. 

Verizon Wireless confirmed this morning that it will begin selling the HTC Thunderbolt for $249 with a two-year contract on Thursday.  This ends a two-month wait for the first LTE-capable smartphone from the carrier.

Everything but the price and release date has been known for some time, but one other interesting tidbit from today’s announcement is that the Thunderbolt will include a 32GB microSDHC memory card in addition to the 8GB of onboard flash memory.  The 32GB card will come pre-installed for a total of 40GB of storage.

If you want the Thunderbolt quickly, you can grab it online or in a Verizon Wireless store starting Thursday.  But if you want to save a little cash, wait bit; one of the third-party sellers will almost certainly have it for less shortly thereafter.

The Motorola XOOM is $599 with a two-year contract if purchased from Verizon Wireless, but LetsTalk.com has the Android 3.0 tablet for $579 shipped on contract (new and upgrade eligible customers).

Without a contract, the XOOM is $799.

Learn more about the Motorola XOOM… 

Windows Phone 7 users have been waiting four months (and counting) for the first update to their phones’ OS, all presumably hoping not to make it to five.  And if a new piece of information proves correct, Microsoft will release that update just before the five month mark – by the end of March.

Microsoft news maven Mary-Joe Foley reports that  French web site FRogz.fr believes the first Windows Phone 7 update – aka NoDo – will be made available to users sometime in the second half of this month.  Her own sources confirm, saying that a day in the week of March 21st is the latest target date. 

Of course, if March passes without NoDo, it won’t come as much of a surprise to users who’ve been anxiously awaiting copy/paste, improved Marketplace searches and general fixes since late October; several reported release dates have come and gone – the latest being March 8th – without so much as a transmitted byte.  

But Microsoft is facing a bit of a brick wall here, as Verizon and Sprint are expected to release Windows Phones soon, and NoDo is reportedly required for CDMA compatibility.

Considering Windows Phone up ‘til now, though, wouldn’t it be fitting if the update arrived on April 1st?  Just sayin’…

The Motorola Atrix 4G is now available from AT&T for $199 with a two-year contract.  But Amazon Wireless is offering the new 4G Android phone for $70 less: $129 at checkout with free shipping for new customers, $149 for an upgrade. 

The Atrix 4G is a mobile powerhouse, with a dual-core 1GHz Tegra 2 CPU from nVidia (like the Motorola XOOM), UMTS, HSDPA, HSUPA, and HSPA+ data connectivity, 16GB of flash storage, 1GB of RAM, and an array of wireless technologies including 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1.

There’s also an optional  Laptop Dock which uses the Atrix as its CPU, giving you an 11.5-inch screen, full keyboard and touchpad.

Well, it’s March 4th and still no HTC Thunderbolt; yet another rumored release date crossed off the calendar.

But it does appear that release is fast approaching. Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said that the LTE smartphone will launch “very shortly,”  and product literature is beginning to show up at Verizon Wireless stores.

And GottaBeMobile says a few chatty Best Buy employees pegged the new-new-new launch date as March 10th. We’ll see. 

One interesting item appears in those in-store product materials:  Video Skype.  We’re not sure if this will require LTE or if it works over 3G as well, but this is noteworthy feature to say the least.

Motorola caught a fair amount of flak when pricing for its XOOM Android 3.0 tablet was announced a few weeks go.  Off contract, the 10-inch tablet is $799; with a two-year Verizon Wireless service agreement, the price falls to $599. Given its feature set over and above the 1st Gen iPad, this price – while high – was at least justifiable.

But with this week’s iPad 2 release and its unchanged pricing model, I wonder if it’s only a matter of time before Motorola and Verizon are forced to lower the XOOM’s price to compete.  Or if they’ll be smart and lower the price simply as a wise business practice.

The XOOM has a fast dual-core processor, 30GB of onboard flash storage, dual cameras, HD video recording, HDMI-out, a range of wireless technologies, and a sleek, slim design.  Against the original iPad, this was impressive, and (arguably) worthy of a price bump over a comparable year-old Apple model.  But the new iPad 2 offers all of these features, yet sells for less. 

The XOOM goes for $799 unsubsidized.  A comparable 32GB iPad 2 with built-in 3G can be yours (on March 11th) for $729 and without a service commitment.

Now, the XOOM is LTE ’4G’ upgradable, which counts for something, but most users won’t be able to access LTE where they live for some time, and Verizon isn’t selling non 4G XOOMs for less.  Apple fanboys and Android lovers can argue point by point which model is better, but it’s an unwinnable argument and not really the point.

If Motorola and other competitors want to gain a meaningful share of the tablet market against the already-entrenched Apple, they have to do better than standing behind devotees’ talking points – they must appeal to the average consumer en masse and appeal to them boldly. 

Why would an average consumer shopping at a Verizon Wireless store – or anywhere else -choose the XOOM over the iPad 2?  Well, the 32GB 3G iPad 2 is $130 more than the subsidized XOOM, but $80 less than the off-contract Moto tablet.  Some will want to pay less up-front for the subsidized XOOM ($599) even if they have to shell out more over a two-year contact period, but many will make the calculation that the extra price ($729) is worth the Apple app, media and accessories ecosystem alone, to say nothing of being contract free and having the chic-factor that comes with owning the latest, greatest Apple gizmo. 

It’s difficult to imagine that the XOOM can compete meaningfully given these prices.

According to iSuppli, the XOOM costs about $360 to manufacture.  If Motorola lowered the unsubsidized price to $499, they’d still make a respectable profit and position themselves at the same price point as the entry-model iPad 2 – with no 3G, no LTE support, and half the onboard storage.  Subsidized by Verizon on contact, the price would fall to $399 or $299. That would change the game for many tablet buyers deciding between the two.

Each of these points can be argued, but I think companies shepherding would-be iPad killers have to be smart; and smart, particularly in this economy, means either 1) comparable and much more affordable or 2) much better and more affordable.  The XOOM, compared to the iPad 2, just doesn’t seem to be much better, and certainly isn’t much more affordable.

As long as there’s no bold, blinding line separating competing tablets and the iPad 2 in price and/or features, they don’t stand a chance.  And that’s bad for all of us.

Matthew Nichols, Products Editor

Popular service support for Windows Phone 7 continues.  Monday, Flickr – an online photo and video hosting service – announced a version of its software for Windows Phone, in addition to a Windows 7 Slate edition.

The Windows Phone Flickr app allows users to view their photos, see recent activity, view uploads from contacts, and share photos from a Windows Phone 7 device.  The app supports hi-res displays, including zoom support and original resolution viewing.  Other features include geo-location, viewing photos taken near your current location, panoramic blades, comments, and auto sync.

Flickr is now available in the Marketplace.  To learn more, click here.

If you’re a T-Mobile Sidekick user, your days are numbered – or at least the days you’ll be able to use your current device as a phone and mobile web device. 

On May 31st, 2011, Microsoft will shut down its “Danger” servers, which manage content for existing Sidekicks.

T-Mobile will continue to sell Sidekick handsets after current support ends, transitioning to Android-powered models. The first will be the Sidekick 4G, which runs Android 2.2 ‘Froyo’ and is compatible with T-Mobile’s HSPA+ high-speed wireless network.  No further information has been made available, but the hardware is reportedly being built by Samsung.

We don’t have a release date for the Sidekick 4G, but given the May 31st cut-off date for the current generation’s servers, it would make sense for its release to come before that time. 

Current users don’t have to switch to a new Sidekick – if you’ve been eying another T-Mobile smartphone, the carrier is providing solutions for getting your data moved over, including a web tool for exporting contacts, media, calendar entries, etc.  There’s also an app “in the Sidekick Catalog to make it easy to export personal data to the Sidekick’s memory card,” according to the carrier.

You can read the official T-Mobile announcement after the jump.

After May 31, 2011, the Danger Service (a subsidiary of Microsoft) used by T-Mobile Sidekick customers for data services will no longer be available on Sidekick devices.

T-Mobile will provide offers for our Sidekick customers before May 31, 2011, to help make an easy transition from their existing Sidekick device to a new device. We will have more information to share about these offers with our customers in the weeks ahead.

To ensure the best possible transition for our loyal Sidekick customers, an enhanced Web tool is available on myT-Mobile.com to easily export their personal data, including contacts, photos, calendar, notes, to-do lists, and bookmarks, from the Danger service to a new device, computer, or a designated e-mail account.  An application is also available in the Sidekick Catalog to make it easy to export personal data to the Sidekick’s memory card.  Many T-Mobile stores can transfer data from that card to a new T-Mobile device if the customer brings in the memory card and Sidekick.

The HTC Thunderbolt has been the focus of lots of Verizon Android fans’ attention these last few months as they’ve patiently waited for its release.  The LTE-equipped smartphone was originally thought to be shipping alongside the Motorola XOOM on February 14th.

When the XOOM launch came and went, reports surfaced that the Thunderbolt would arrive in late February.  But this is the last day of the month, and still there have been no announcements.  Why?

Apparently, the first LTE Android phone from Verizon has been plagued with terrible battery life, and the folks at the carrier and HTC are working on a firmware update to address the issue.  While Engadget is reporting that multiple sources have confirmed that this is, indeed, the cause of the push back, others believe the phone has been purposely delayed to help reportedly disappointing Verizon iPhone 4 sales.  Verizon is rightly stating that “no release date has ever been released” for the Thunderbolt, but has made no comment regarding delays. 

So, now the word is that March 4th is the day for the HTC Thunderbolt.  We’ll see.  If the March 4th date holds, this would seem to support the cynical theory that the issue isn’t one of hardware or software, while a longer delay would suggest bigger problems.

We’ll keep you updated on the latest rumors.