It’s been a rocky road to Gingerbread for the HTC ThunderBolt, but it appears that Verizon is once again pushing out the long-awaited update. The original 2.3 over-the-air update began back in late September, but serious bugs and glitches led the Verizon to suspend updates just a couple of days later. The new and presumably corrected update also includes HTC’s fix for the massive security flaws discovered on all Sense phone earlier.

It’s taken many months and more than a few delays for the latest version of Android Gingerbread to make it to Verizon’s first LTE smartphone. The ThunderBolt was originally launched in March, a full three months after the Nexus S debuted with Gingerbread. Those without the inclination to root or tinker have been running Android 2.2 Froyo on the ThunderBolt ever since, meaning that until today, it was using an operating system more than ten months out of date. HTC has already committed to providing Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to “as many devices as possible“, but given HTC and Verizon’s handling of the flagship phone, who knows when it will actually arrive.

According to Verizon, the latest update includes a new Download Manager app, Google Books, new power management options, and an enhanced interface for the desktop dock. Other various back-end improvements are improved security features and data connectivity, a fix for a bug that sent text messages to the wrong contacts ,and other various fixes and updates. As always, to manually check for an update on a stock ThunderBolt, Go to the Settings Menu and tap Software Update, then Check New.

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