HTC One Cracked Camera Glass

Just under a month after getting my HTC One I put my hand in my pocket to stroke it and felt a sharp edge. Taking it out of my pocket I discovered that the material covering the camera had cracked. I have done nothing out of the ordinary to cause this, and have certainly treated it better and had it for a much shorter period of time than all of my previous phones, none of which have broken like this.

I am not alone in this. In fact there is a list of approximately fifty people with the same problem on XDA. That thread is full of flames, conspiracy theories and wild theories, but at the end of the day a considerable amount of the users reporting the issue have either posted a photo or have accounts older than May.

HTC said that physical damage is usually not covered by warranty, and that if I decided not to go ahead with the repair after hearing their quote (which others have reported will be $90) I would still have to pay £25 postage to get the phone back. Citizen's Advice said that under the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 Three are responsible for supplying me goods that are of "satisfactory quality" which should last a "reasonable" amount of time, however they are really not interested and say that I should have noticed if there was something wrong with the phone when I bought it.

UPDATE: I took Three to court (quite easy to do online) and won by default when they continued to ignore the situation. They only paid up (the full price of the phone) when I threatened to send in the bailiffs.

UPDATE: I paid HTC a total of £85 to repair the cracked camera glass. There are now many walk throughs, including videos, showing you how to replace the glass yourself, which could be much cheaper.

Fix HTC HD2 Digitiser/Touchscreen

Make sure you try a soft-reset first by pushing the little red button on the back of the phone while it is on. After four months I just discovered that that fixed it. Luckily I hadn't ordered a new screen/digitiser on ebay.

Technology Bites

I received what looked like a piece of spam from one of my contacts today. I called him to check and sure enough he hadn't sent it. It seems that spammers are more and more turning to cracking peoples' accounts in order to get spam through filters.

Various issues with the EasyJet website:

• Insurance is still added automatically, despite orders by EU regulators to do otherwise.
• Once you have provisionally chosen your flights, you don't seem to be able to change them without actually "removing" them first.
• Baggage costs £8 per journey leg, but booking a return journey you are only given the option for the entire return journey at £16. As far as I can see the only way to get individual £8 option is to book the two legs separately, and then you have to pay the card fee twice, which is £3 for debit cards and £6 for credit cards, so you may not be much better off anyway.

Booking train tickets is also a bloody nightmare, the train companies seem intent on hiding return fares and promoting single fares. Yes two singles can be cheaper, but you often have to be very flexible with your times otherwise you can end up spending twice what a return would have cost. Bring on renationalisation I say.

My HTC Touch HD is finally back from the repair centre working!

Fourth Time Lucky

My HTC Touch HD is back at the repair shop. For the fourth time. Since HTC fixed the scratches, after much persuading, that were picked up from the first time that I sent it back the screen had been going blank intermittently. I really don't think much of the quality of their repairs.

Flashing The HTC Touch HD

Because I keep forgetting:

1. Start Win7 in "allow unsigned drivers" mode.
2. Turn off USB connectivity in ActiveSync.
3. Start the phone in bootloader mode by holding down vol down while booting.
4. Update the drivers to those here. Note the 64 bit option. If "the device cannot start" unplug the phone and plug it back in again.
5. Run USPL.
6. Flash ROM. (Serial HT847KD00009.)

I guess steps 2. and 4. may be unnecessary once you've done it once.

Or...

1. Copy BLACIMG.NBH into the root dir of your Storage Card.
2. Turn off your device by using the Power Button.
3. Remove storage card.
4. Go to Boot loader mode. (Push and hold Vol. Down + press Power button.)
5. Insert storage card when you see USB displaying on screen.
6. Disallow USB connections in ActiveSync.
7. Disallow On-Access virus scanning.
8. Run USPL 2.5.
9. Phone should restart and ask you to press the power button to start flashing the ROM.
10. Apparently you should always do a hard reset after an update.

More Service From HTC

Finally getting to the bottom of my HTC service woes. Actually spoke to the repair centre today, who claim that there is no way that my phone could have been scratched while in their care. When I told them that after the first repair it had come back without a screen protector it sounded like I was making it up :( They also said that I didn't fill in the check sheet the first time to say there were no scratches, well that was because there were no scratches. Also really annoyed that it's taken days of effort from me to actually get this information out of them.

HTC Service: No Longer Funny

So I sent my HTC Touch HD back for the third time a week ago. Usually by this point I have had about three emails giving me some useless, meaningless, but I now realise still reassuring, information. I called today as I am going on holiday tomorrow, and I don't really want it delivered while I am away. The first call made me wonder if they had just lost it. The phone that is. The guy said that it had been delivered but that "delivery had failed" and then asked if it had been collected. Well yes. He didn't call me back. The second person tried to call the repair centre while I was on hold. When they didn't pick up he explained that they might be on a break, and would I like him to ask their secretary to get them back in from their break. Not especially. He also couldn't see any record of my request to not have the phone delivered until I'm back from holiday. He didn't call back either. At 5 I called back again, and finally was told that my phone was "on hold" due to the fact that I hadn't replied to the email that I hadn't received. Apparently I needed to answer some question, which she couldn't tell me, but she would email the repair centre, which by this time was closed, who would email me the question again.

Scratches Without The Service

I spoke too soon. Once I'd received my phone back for the second time, still scratched, I wasn't so happy with HTC's service. I am even less happy with their service a day later when neither of the two people who've promised to get back to me have done so, and I still haven't received any emails regarding the next pick up.

Apparently they have two problems. My phone is regarded as still in transit, despite the fact that I have it in my pocket, this means that they cannot open a new support call. Also they have just discovered that they cannot make outgoing calls, to people such as the transit company/department to ask about why my phone is reported as still in transit. Presumably this is also why no one has called me back, though why they didn't know they wouldn't be able to call me back is anyone's guess.

Incidentally I have found that the best way to get through to someone quickly who will be able to hear and understand you is to dial 01279 206906 and then choose technical support, option 2.

Service With A Scratch

About a month ago my phone (an HTC Touch HD) started to behave oddly, often not having reception in residential areas and not being able to make calls or send text messages even when it did. Being used to fluffy (l)user support calls I gave it some time and eventually compared the reception of my phone to my friend's HTC Diamond Pro. The reception of my phone was undoubtedly, markedly worse so I started the returns' procedure, which apart from an amusing email ("The quotation has been resolved... Don’t worry, we’ll keep you fully informed.") and phone call ("What does 'The quotation has been resolved' mean?... This line's very bad... isn't that a bit of a problem for a call centre?") went smoothly and my phone was picked up and fixed under warranty, without question (despite the fact I'd bought it on eBay) in 5 working days. However the screen has been scratched and the unlock code wouldn't work as they'd changed the main board and hence the IMEI number. So I called them up again (I have to say that it really is a lot more pleasant and less stressful to speak to a native English speaker) and again they agreed to take it back to fix it without question, they will even collect it this very afternoon. So I am left with an overall sense that HTC offers good service, despite the fact that if their phone hadn't broken in the first place, and then hadn't been scratched while being repaired I wouldn't have had to go through their returns procedure, no matter how quick and pain-free it is.

UPDATE