HTC and the curse of the weak displays

Posted by Alex on Jul 23, 2007 • (Comments)

A few friends of mine have HTC phones. HTC? You know, the guys that make that nice Touch handset – the one that Ewan quite likes. I’ve really been into Symbian phones over the past few years (both S60 and UIQ), and never really considered a Windows Mobile device. However if someone had asked me up until a few weeks ago which one would I recommend, I wouldn’t hesitate to send them off to get an HTC unit.

Then I witnessed a strange thing. In the same weekend, two friends had their screens completely fail, both within a couple of hours of each other. We’re not just talking a slight failure, or maybe a few duff pixels: oh no, we’re talking complete and castastrophic display failure. There’s no sign of physical damage to the plastic part of the screen, not even a scratch.

They’re both with Orange, so a quick phone call, and Orange being their usual unhelpful self (‘have you tried switched it off and on again?’), and the next day they got their handsets replaced by courier.

Over the weekend, the screen went *again* one of these two week old replacement handsets. That’s it in the picture at the top of the article. It looks like someones shot at the middle of the screen – but again not a single scratch on the plastic. They haven’t been dropped, kicked, sat on, or anything obvious like that – the displays just seem to be randomly failing.

One phone having a problem is just bad luck. Two – hmm, perhaps a concidence. Three phones from two people in as many weeks? It reeks of a manufacturing fault, or a problem with a batch. Orange just keep replacing the handsets under insurance – but how long will that last?

Incidently in all my years in mobile, with more handsets than I can remember under my belt, I’ve never had a broken screen on a phone. Seen it happen once on an HP iPAQ, but that was after serious daily abuse and a catastrophic dropping incident.

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MPH

I have had 2 catostrophic screen failures on the Dash with no abuse, one on my mother's Dash, and hoped the Shadow would be better - I got about two weeks out of my first Shadow before the screen died. Never had similar problems with any other manufacturer. Tmobile says it's the gasket.

cyclist

I thought HTC had this sorted, but looks like not. I bought one of the very first O2 XDAs in 2002. The screen did this after three days, just two days before I was due to leave for Australia for a long trip. Carphone Warehouse were very good - I went back to the shop and they handed over another one immediately. Apparently the screen failure was so well known at that time they had instructions to replace without question!
In the last five years I've had a total of 5 HTC devices with no screen problems.

Ewan

The HTC Touch is performing brililantly with it's screen!

Loulou

Thank you honey for this.

Yup, that's my phone.

I took it out of my pocket, put it on the sofa next to me, checked the time on it, watched some telly, picked it up, checked the time on it again, and poof! It's b*ggered. Since Alex was watching the same pile of poop Saturday night TV on the sofa at the time, he is well placed to verify this!

A couple of weeks ago, the guy I live with left his on his desk at home, went off to do whatever men do on a Saturday, came back, and the screen was funked. The next day, I took mine out of my pocket and put it on a shelf while I clipped my dog ... came back, and poof! B*ggered.

Luckily, Alex witnessed that too (I must cook a good roast at the weekends ;o) )

Orange have agreed to courier me a new phone tomorrow, but we'd have had to pay £50 if we weren't on the Premier package.

Annoying? Hell yeah. This isn't the first time we've had an LCD problem - the last was with an IPAQ something or other about 4 years ago, and that was confirmed to be a manufacturing fault - there was stress on the over cover thingy that funked the LCD.

The Orange lady said this morning she hadn't heard of any that had faults like this ... so, how come my biz partner had the same thing happen to him about a month ago with the same E650 handset hmm?

I wouldn't mind so much if I was throwing them around or having a mobile hurling competition - but we are developers, who need these beasts at the moment for some serious testing for our Orange Partner client - and they are one of the 3 UK WM6 phone around. We are really kid gloving them.

Bah. I've dropped other Nokia phones ( the £500k protoype I've dropped down the stairs springs immediately to mind!) , seen one in a bucket of water that was dried out and both worked well afterwards ... but never seen an LCD crack like this before on a phone. And having around 10 handsets at a time in testing around, I'm pretty sure I'd have seen it before on a phone.

Tell momma, Orange, this is a dev partner you are talking to ... what's the story here? You are the only guys in the UK that supply this device ... what's going on?

Sigh ...another morning waiting in for a courier dude tomorrow ... I wonder if it's the same cute one they sent last time ... well, you have to find the silver lining, don't you? ;o)

Alex Kinch