i've been spending quite a bit of time on this recently and decided to pass on the thunderbolt. main reason is the battery drain while in 4g is obscene, verizon even released a new fatter battery and back to help deal with this. the tb also does not have a dual core chip :-(
also re: os, i can't really find any phone other than google's that is running gingerbread now.
the 2 phones i have narrowed it down to are the atrix and the upcoming droid bionic.
i am going with the droid bionic, release date ~april 17th, this should be THE phone, at least for a yearish. iphone5 looks good but smaller screen.
droid bionic
http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US...EN?localeId=33