Best Buy has confirmed its HTC Thunderbolt pre-orders along with its exclusive access to the phone. The phone can be reserved in advance for a $50 deposit. Since Best Buy has a “national retail exclusive” on the Thunderbolt, it won’t have to compete with other third-party stores.

We still don’t have a ship date and the price still hasn’t been set by the carrier, but a February 14 ship date and a $250 contract price have both been leaked.

The Thunderbolt is the first LTE-capable smartphone in the US and Verizon says that it should pull about 5-12Mbps downstream in a populated network. It sports a 4.3-inch screen, rear eight-megapixel and front VGA cameras and 1GHz Snapdragon processor.

[Electronista]