Online retailer Wirefly has disclosed that the Verizon HTC Thunderbolt would go on sale on 17th of March, with preorders for the much-anticipated smartphone starting on 15th of March.

Wirefly said they had received a document from Verizon stating, “The wireless devices group introduces the HTC ThunderBolt to the product line-up! The HTC ThunderBolt will launch on March 17, 2011!”

However, Wirefly did not mention its special price for the handset. A spokesperson for the Wirefly said the price would be announced at the time of their launch.

The HTC Thunderbolt will run Android OS 2.2, and will come equipped with a 4.3-inch touchscreen, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, pre-installed 32GB Micro SD card, Wi-Fi, FM radio, two cameras- an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for making video calls.

The HTC Thunderbolt will be the first LTE phone out of the total four that network provider Verizon has plans to launch in 2011. Verizon claims that LTE will provide speeds of up 10 times faster than the 3G speeds.

The other three LTE smartphones slated for later this year are: the Droid Bionic 4G, the LG Revolution and the Samsung 4G LTE.