HTC Sensation - Game over!

Well its all come to an end.  No more HTC Sensation, I am glad, and very relieved to say!

As you will have seen from other posts my HTC Sensation has randomly turned itself off variously starting about 2 months after I bought it.  This wasn't an orderly shut down - the screen would just go completely blank with no warning.  Some things appeared to reduce the problem (removing a program called TasKiller; inserting a business card between the battery and aluminium unibody; refreshing the battery; charging only from the mains; etc.) but the problem never went away entirely and would usually return.

After a period of mostly good behaviour, and only occasional turn offs, a couple of weeks ago it turned itself off at least five times on each of two consecutive days.  This stresses me out because it means I cannot rely on it for even basic telephony tasks.  It even managed to turn itself off while on charge.  I don't recall it doing this before (if it has it's only been once) and since I put the turn offs down to a problem with the battery/charging circuit and battery tracking in the firmware this was a particular surprise.  Once this happened - all bets were off.

Here is the battery usage for 4 April:

Note the gaps around the middle before I put it on to charge.
Also it had been on battery for closer to 9 hours rather than 5.


It all became too much and after a very stressful week at work my handset suffered a high velocity non-parabolic trajectory towards the floor.  Surprisingly it didn't completely break, but it did distort the case and delaminate the screen so the touch element isn't fully functional any more.  After 20 months trying to tolerate the £500 buggy mess that was my HTC Sensation, I had just had enough!



My handset is just a total train wreck.  It is riddled with bugs that any serious QA would have squashed before release.  I am inclined to think that the turn off problem is a hardware bug that is exacerbated by a software bug.  The battery control/charging circuit cannot properly keep track of the charge in the battery and the software relies on this mistaken information from the hardware.  When the hardware information about the battery doesn't match i. the actual state of the battery and ii. the software's expectations of the battery; the software panics and shuts off.


Then there are the other bugs like "SD Card removed unexpectedly" (a show stopper also - only solved with a reboot and has happened about 10 minutes after a reboot), the ring and alert tones that randomly change to different options (again solved with a reboot), HTC providing software updates for only the first year after release (You're SOL if you're on a 2 year contract!), and the HTC widgets that slurp all your data.

That's right, the clock widget, the stocks widget, the weather widget, to name but three.  All are incredibly useful, and in the case of the clock widget somewhat iconic symbols of HTC's past dominance of the Android space.  But they also all have all permissions enabled by default so they can access all data on the handset, do things that cost money, authenticate accounts, detect the phone's ID etc.  Considering HTC have been given a sizeable slap on data privacy and security from the USA FCC it raises the questions:
1. Why did HTC give every permission by default to widgets that needed at most internet access, and perhaps an ID detection to ensure they're not ripped for use on non-HTC handsets?
2. What did/do HTC do with the data they slurped from all these handsets, including mine?
3. Why did they take data they didn't need especially when it has been shown they are incapable of holding it in a secure way?


As these widgets are installed by default you would have to go looking in the settings to find out all of this.  There is no opportunity to review the permissions as would be the case for an application installed from the Google Play store.


HTC are nothing more than manufacturers of crap handsets, with premium prices they do not justify.  I've had two now and they've both been total rubbish.  Their service and support are also particularly useless, and once your handset is 12 months old you can forget further software updates.



I've now obtained a new smart phone, but forgive me for not revealing what it is.  The topic of these blog posts has been the miserable experience of being a HTC owner, the terrible quality of HTC software and hardware, and the wholly inadequate "support" from HTC.  It isn't intended to be "HTC are bad, but here is something I think is better", as that would be somewhat off topic.  All I will say, rather predictably, is that my new handset isn't a HTC!

So far I am happy with my new Smart phone.  It is reliable, battery life is good, and I'm yet to find any bugs.  It isn't perfect, but its streets ahead of anything produced by HTC.  My Sensation was turned off for the last time a couple of days ago once I had retrieved all the data from it, marking the end of 3.5 years as a HTC user.  It is a day that couldn't have come quickly enough.  One of the first things I did was to change my Google password to make sure HTC cannot access my account any further!


HTC had a real opportunity to "steal" me as a loyal customer after I became disillusioned with Nokia handsets that were getting progressively buggier, but their contempt for me as a customer was palpable.


Android is a good mobile operating system.  It has good features, and a well thought out User Interface.  Unfortunately HTC turns Android into an utterly miserable User Experience.

There are many types of smart phones out there - and with a bit of research, plus trying them out in store, you'll find one that you're happy with and that meets your requirements.

The bottom line?  If you want an Android smart phone avoid HTC at all costs!

HTC Sensation - the plot gets repetitive!!

You'll be unsurprised to hear that my HTC Sensation experience has
been more of the same since my last blog post.

One thing to note is that in the last 6 months I've found I can no longer use the camera flash on my handset because when it fires it always kills my handset with a sudden turn off.  I can't be sure but I would suspect the sudden power drain is the cause, and that would point to a badly designed power and battery system.

My phone has continued to have occasional sudden turn offs.  One morning at work in December it went off after some continuous use due to our building having a power cut at the time.  A few days later the phone turned off twice in my pocket while out Christmas shopping.  The gaps appeared in the battery usage graph as before.  The first gap was small, and the second turn off made the gap bigger with a different resultant level after the gap.  I ran the battery down to 5% and charged up fully overnight.

The next day the phone turned off again in my pocket.  When I booted it up it turned off in my hand as it finished booting.  I had already suspected that the battery was again suffering small but sufficient movement to be the cause of these turn offs, despite my earlier (incredibly advanced!) fix of adding a business card between the unibody and the battery.  This time I added in some blu-tac at the top of the battery (to hold it against the handset's power contacts), and on the back (to hold it firm against the unibody).

I've not had any problems in the month since then so it looks like battery movement was again the cause of the random switch offs.  This is pretty pathetic!!  A £500 handset that has such terrible mechanical design that the only way to keep it working is by fixing it with blu-tac!!

Some may speculate that the cause of this problem is having a removable battery.  A properly designed handset should support a removable battery without this problem - my other 7 mobiles with removable batteries don't have this problem.  It just happens that HTC don't put much effort into correctly designing their handsets.


Another bug I've noticed is that the ring and notification tones can get changed at random.  More than once I've found an incoming call has triggered the calendar reminder jingle instead of my normal ring tone.  It goes without saying that HTC haven't provided any updates for some time now.  I think it is certain that the handset will not get Android 4.1 - it is currently on Android 4.0.3.

This is the big frustration.  HTC only support their handsets for about a year after launch, but users are often locked into a 2 year contract with their mobile network.  The only way to get updates after the manufacturer stops supporting the handset is by rooting it and installing a custom ROM like Cyanogen which is not only beyond the abilities of many users, but would also have consequences for the handset's warranty.  Most users just don't want that kind of hassle.

HTC - Epic FAIL!

Unfortunately this is an issue that only Google can fix in Android - allowing updates to the OS without requiring the handset manufacturer to re-integrate their customisations (like HTC Sense) so that handsets can be updated for as long as they're technically capable of running the underlying Android OS version.  I don't see that happening any time soon unfortunately - and this will only exacerbate the version fragmentation that plagues Android.