Build quality is how well its built, how prone to failure, do ports stop working? Does the screen get non responsive?
HTC's phones are typically the best screens and the best materials after apple but the build quality typically lacks
I work at a verizon kiosk and the main phones people have and are pissed off about are htc phones. The batteries are built like crap because they don't hold a good charge for long (customers already complaining about the DNA and it's battery life), screens die off, charging ports stop working at random, I've even seen ports break off inside phones due to a poor soldering job. But I guess those phones have great build quality because they bare made out of better material?
I loved my evo but the build quality just wasn't there...
You're correct. It's not just the materials, it's how well they're put together. I believe HTC knocks it out of the park consistently. Not every time, but consistently. Samsung just doesn't. It seems they've turned a corner with the GS3 and that's great. I'm glad, really. But let's not pretend that's always been the case. It has actually never been the case until now. The original S on Sprint was not great. The S2 was the worst phone I have ever dealt with. The screen problems are so prevalent on the S2 they created a swap-out kit for in-store techs so they wouldn't need to be sent in for repair. Between those 2 devices, I've swapped them out 10 times for hardware issues (once for a camera software issue on the original S series). That's Samsung build quality. And it's piss poor. The GS3 doesn't seem to have those kind of issues, so it seems like Sammy is making progress. As long as you don't count the mainboard "sudden death" failures.
HTC isn't perfect either. They've had some hardware problems, sure. Who hasn't? But I've owned HTC devices exclusively for myself (the Samsung phones were my wife's and now my son's) for over 6 years. I had to swap out my OG EVO once for a failure of the capacitive buttons. I swapped out my TouchPro 2 for a mechanical issue with the slider. That's it. Two swaps for hardware issues. There were two others for software issues. If I add them all together I can use one hand and have a finger left over. If I have to swap out another Sammy I have to start using toes to count. Most of HTC's issues tend to be software related, including the dreaded proximity sensor issue since the JB update. That doesn't mean they are small issues. But the physical build of an HTC device is sturdier. It's tighter. It's beefier. I don't need to put a case on it. I've dropped it several times and it has a couple dents in the aluminum. My wife dropped her GS3 before she bought a case for it and holy crap did it tear up the back of that phone. The build and design of the One series has been lauded by tons of sites, big and small, over the S3. The OG EVO was practically a work of art. The 3D was built like a brick poopie-house. I like to know what's out there so I pay attention to all of the devices and I play with all of them as much as I can. Even the OneX and the DNA, and I can't get those on Sprint. LG, Moto, Sammy, Sony... hell, I even pay attention to what Pantech and Kyocera are doing! If you want to talk software, that's another issue (Sammy killed it with the GS3). I don't consider battery life as part of a build quality. Most manufacturers get their batteries from the same places in China. Battery life has become more an issue of screen usage and efficient software design. But since you brought it up, I get the same battery usage as my wife on her GS3 (which she loves, especially compared to the 4-6 hours she would get on her GS2), but I use mine twice as much as she does. I run my business from this phone so I text, call and email all day long. Right now I'm at 20 hours, with 19% remaining. That includes 2 hours of calls on a BT headset, 1 hour of Pitfall (sweet Jesus I love that game), a half hour of Asphalt 6, a little web browsing, an hour and a half of GPS and navigation to get to a vendor in Long Beach and a couple dozen emails and texts, though it was plugged in for half an hour yesterday afternoon while I was transferring data on a client's PC.