In a quick hands-on of ThunderBolt, I had a chance to operate the in-store demo unit and was very impressed by the quick loading - -almost instant -- of Web pages over LTE on several sites, including Computerworld, ESPN and the The New York Times.

An ESPN video of President Obama filing out his NCAA tournament bracket streamed beautifully, but it took three or four seconds at the launch of the clip to eliminate video tiling that completely obscured the image.

I couldn't get Web speed tests to work before another customer arrived to check out the device, the only ThunderBolt on display in the store.

Elsewhere, Best Buy sells the ThunderBolt for the same price as Verizon -- $249.99 with a two-year contract. The retailer had been advertising the smartphone for weeks in Sunday newspaper circulars for $299.99 and then on Wednesday said it would drop the price to $249.99 for three days only.

Suddenly on Thursday morning, Best Buy issued a short statement that it would extend the lower price beyond three days, but didn't say for how long.