HTC One: Here's the SKINNY on the infamous PURPLE TINT (thermal defect)

SamClementi

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I would just like to post my experience with my defective HTC One.

I bought my HTC One out of contract in September of 2013 for $599. Sometime last month I began to notice the camera showing a purple hue in low light, and it quickly escalated to complete pink/purple haze.

Not knowing it was a known defect with the camera lens, I attempted to resolve it myself. This included unlocking the bootloader through the HTCDev site in order to load an HTC Sense 6 ROM because I heard there was new camera software. This of course did not solve anything.

So I turned to HTC support and they told me to send the phone back, it would be fixed/replaced for $20 and I would have the phone in a couple days. I stressed so much that I rely on the phone for business and couldn't be without it for long.

The same day they received the phone I get an email stating the repair charges will be $200.00. I promptly submit a request to be contacted to discuss the situation. Nearly a week goes by and I don't hear anything, so I call in. I am told the reason for the charge is because the phone has an unlocked bootloader. I attempt to explain the difference between a hardware defect and a software issue and am told I need to speak with an escalation agent. Five more days go by and I hear nothing, so I call back and stay on the line until I can talk with someone. When I finally do, I am told over and over again that HTC carries no responsibility for the phone because the bootloader was unlocked. I eventually demand they return the phone, stating that I will never purchase another HTC device again.

I am extremely upset at this point that a company can manufacture and sell a defective product to a consumer, and then deny responsibility over a technicality. I'm completely disgusted with HTC and I will never purchase one of their devices again, and I will let others know my experience.

Sadly, this little rant and $600 phone that takes purple tinted pictures is all I have thanks to HTC and their policies.
 

Kilroy13

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I would just like to post my experience with my defective HTC One.

I bought my HTC One out of contract in September of 2013 for $599. Sometime last month I began to notice the camera showing a purple hue in low light, and it quickly escalated to complete pink/purple haze.

Not knowing it was a known defect with the camera lens, I attempted to resolve it myself. This included unlocking the bootloader through the HTCDev site in order to load an HTC Sense 6 ROM because I heard there was new camera software. This of course did not solve anything.

So I turned to HTC support and they told me to send the phone back, it would be fixed/replaced for $20 and I would have the phone in a couple days. I stressed so much that I rely on the phone for business and couldn't be without it for long.

The same day they received the phone I get an email stating the repair charges will be $200.00. I promptly submit a request to be contacted to discuss the situation. Nearly a week goes by and I don't hear anything, so I call in. I am told the reason for the charge is because the phone has an unlocked bootloader. I attempt to explain the difference between a hardware defect and a software issue and am told I need to speak with an escalation agent. Five more days go by and I hear nothing, so I call back and stay on the line until I can talk with someone. When I finally do, I am told over and over again that HTC carries no responsibility for the phone because the bootloader was unlocked. I eventually demand they return the phone, stating that I will never purchase another HTC device again.

I am extremely upset at this point that a company can manufacture and sell a defective product to a consumer, and then deny responsibility over a technicality. I'm completely disgusted with HTC and I will never purchase one of their devices again, and I will let others know my experience.

Sadly, this little rant and $600 phone that takes purple tinted pictures is all I have thanks to HTC and their policies.
everyone knows if you unlock the boot loader it voids the warranty! you have no one to be mad at but yourself! my wife uses my m7 and it has had the purple since day one, the only time it affects the picture is in a totally dark atmosphere, who takes pictures like that anyway?

Sent from my LG-LS995 using Tapatalk
 

SamClementi

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everyone knows if you unlock the boot loader it voids the warranty! you have no one to be mad at but yourself! my wife uses my m7 and it has had the purple since day one, the only time it affects the picture is in a totally dark atmosphere, who takes pictures like that anyway?

Sent from my LG-LS995 using Tapatalk

Your input is astoundingly helpful. So anyone who unlocks their phone, even using HTCs official methods, should be screwed for a manufacturing defect. That is a really dangerous precedent to set.

Also, if you have the SAME EXACT issue to the same degree that I do, you phone would hue the pictures in low light, not "totally dark" like you mentioned, and create a checkerboard pattern across the image.
 

Kilroy13

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Your input is astoundingly helpful. So anyone who unlocks their phone, even using HTCs official methods, should be screwed for a manufacturing defect. That is a really dangerous precedent to set.

Also, if you have the SAME EXACT issue to the same degree that I do, you phone would hue the pictures in low light, not "totally dark" like you mentioned, and create a checkerboard pattern across the image.
sounds like you have corrupted the software causing damage to the camera!

Sent from my LG-LS995 using Tapatalk
 

safeel

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I have this issue for a long time. But the problem is I made the purchase in another country. The HTC service center in my city said that they are not authorized to install software since the manufacturing place was another country.

Will they be able to repair the device if I send to the HTC tech center where the device was purchased?
 

aokusman

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I would just like to post my experience with my defective HTC One.

I bought my HTC One out of contract in September of 2013 for $599. Sometime last month I began to notice the camera showing a purple hue in low light, and it quickly escalated to complete pink/purple haze.

Not knowing it was a known defect with the camera lens, I attempted to resolve it myself. This included unlocking the bootloader through the HTCDev site in order to load an HTC Sense 6 ROM because I heard there was new camera software. This of course did not solve anything.

So I turned to HTC support and they told me to send the phone back, it would be fixed/replaced for $20 and I would have the phone in a couple days. I stressed so much that I rely on the phone for business and couldn't be without it for long.

The same day they received the phone I get an email stating the repair charges will be $200.00. I promptly submit a request to be contacted to discuss the situation. Nearly a week goes by and I don't hear anything, so I call in. I am told the reason for the charge is because the phone has an unlocked bootloader. I attempt to explain the difference between a hardware defect and a software issue and am told I need to speak with an escalation agent. Five more days go by and I hear nothing, so I call back and stay on the line until I can talk with someone. When I finally do, I am told over and over again that HTC carries no responsibility for the phone because the bootloader was unlocked. I eventually demand they return the phone, stating that I will never purchase another HTC device again.

I am extremely upset at this point that a company can manufacture and sell a defective product to a consumer, and then deny responsibility over a technicality. I'm completely disgusted with HTC and I will never purchase one of their devices again, and I will let others know my experience.

Sadly, this little rant and $600 phone that takes purple tinted pictures is all I have thanks to HTC and their policies.
I feel your pain buy you should have known that tampering with the software would void your warranty. You actually gave HTC a cop out repairing a manufacturing defect.

Sent from Surulere, lagos. Nigeria.
 

CHILLYWILL_95831

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I would just like to post my experience with my defective HTC One.

I bought my HTC One out of contract in September of 2013 for $599. Sometime last month I began to notice the camera showing a purple hue in low light, and it quickly escalated to complete pink/purple haze.

Not knowing it was a known defect with the camera lens, I attempted to resolve it myself. This included unlocking the bootloader through the HTCDev site in order to load an HTC Sense 6 ROM because I heard there was new camera software. This of course did not solve anything.

So I turned to HTC support and they told me to send the phone back, it would be fixed/replaced for $20 and I would have the phone in a couple days. I stressed so much that I rely on the phone for business and couldn't be without it for long.

The same day they received the phone I get an email stating the repair charges will be $200.00. I promptly submit a request to be contacted to discuss the situation. Nearly a week goes by and I don't hear anything, so I call in. I am told the reason for the charge is because the phone has an unlocked bootloader. I attempt to explain the difference between a hardware defect and a software issue and am told I need to speak with an escalation agent. Five more days go by and I hear nothing, so I call back and stay on the line until I can talk with someone. When I finally do, I am told over and over again that HTC carries no responsibility for the phone because the bootloader was unlocked. I eventually demand they return the phone, stating that I will never purchase another HTC device again.

I am extremely upset at this point that a company can manufacture and sell a defective product to a consumer, and then deny responsibility over a technicality. I'm completely disgusted with HTC and I will never purchase one of their devices again, and I will let others know my experience.

Sadly, this little rant and $600 phone that takes purple tinted pictures is all I have thanks to HTC and their policies.

This is exactly why I do not unlock or root my phones..imho it's complete nerd activity..do so at your own risk! And, on top of all that, the M7 purple tint has been a known defect for over a year now. The thing that astounds me is you actually had a defective phone and must have thought "oh, I'm super smart, I'll just boot load a Rom and fix my phone! " Honestly, you can't make a much worse decision than that, especially after reading, even in this thread, that people are sending their phones back to HTC as a hardware problem. How did you skip right past numerous posts saying send the phone back and find the one that says boot load a Rom to fix the problem? SIMPLY AMAZING! YOU HAVE A DEFECTIVE DEVICE....CALL HTC..PERIOD! ! If you were trying to install sense 6 which just hit THIS February, then you had more than enough info available to know you can't fix the M7 with a software upgrade...then after your idiocy and arrogance, you want to blame HTC for HONORING an expressly written warranty policy. I'm almost not believing there's anyone that would be that ignorant and then have the balls to post it! Lol! SHEEZ!

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Chipsot

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Re: Here's the SKINNY on the infamous PURPLE TINT (thremal defect)

Yes, if you don't activate it, it's not on. With all due respect if you have the purple tint only a replacement part will fix it - the damage is already done. Temperature doesn't matter much by that point. If ZOEs can cause a component to be heat damaged surely other activity can also do this? Therefore the ZOE theory is not a fail. It just suggests that part of the camera is more sensitive to heat than it really should be. The only advice I would take away is if you don't have the problem, remember to turn the ZOE option off after use.

I have the blue tint only when the background of a subject is bright and the camera is set to 'AUTO', if I change to 'BACKLIT' or any other mode the blue tint vanishes!
Seems the auto mode of the camera is to blaim and so is it a software fault?
 

CHILLYWILL_95831

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That may be a software issue with your particular phone, but HTC admittedly replaced those faulty camera modules in M7s. The purple tint issue absolutely was not a software fix. And, I'm willing to bet that if you got that camera module replaced, your blue tint issue would go away as well!

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svdb

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I just registered with this site so let me share my experience and my experiments here for my first post, for what it's worth.

I buy a lot of used phones to test the apps I'm writing, and since it's only for testing purposes I load them up with various flavors of Android. So the other day I bought an M7 from craigslist. It had 4.4.2 on it and the owner was fed up with the purple haze.
One of my close friends also has an M7 but he never bothered upgrading so it still has 4.1.2 on it : no purple haze, even when using ZOE! Ha... interesting! It didn't take me long to load a 4.1.2 onto mine and tadaa... no more purple haze in low light, but of course I'm not using HTC's firmware either so no ZOE.
Since ZEO allegedly overheats some components and I didn't have ZOE on my vanilla 4.1.2, why not make the entire phone overheat in the sun while using it : I mounted the M7 on my car's dash and had it film the road during my commute. It didn't take long to be burning hot. It was so hot I had to use my car's AC to cool it down before I could touch it again. If heat damages any component and as a consequence causes purple haze in dim light, surely my device must have been toast. But it wasn't. Still no purple haze while filming and lava hot, and no purple haze either while cool and shooting photos in low light.
The moment I loaded a vanilla 4.4.2 back on it: purple haze!

The next day I also tried loading Honycomb and although a bunch of things didn't work such as the volume buttons for some reason, the stock camera did work and it was without purple haze in low light (just a crappy resolution).

It took a certain amount of time to do the loading/testing so I hope you appreciate my feedback.
I won't draw any conclusions but surely you can.
 

Yousuf2003

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hello suddenly i got heating problem with camera tint and my device getting charger too slow and its not even showing full battery anymore and its ttaking more or less two days to b fully charged and even if i switched off with full battery its discharged within 4-5 hours....its like lot of problem with my phone ..can any one suggest me how can i solve all these problems...
 

CHILLYWILL_95831

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I just registered with this site so let me share my experience and my experiments here for my first post, for what it's worth.

I buy a lot of used phones to test the apps I'm writing, and since it's only for testing purposes I load them up with various flavors of Android. So the other day I bought an M7 from craigslist. It had 4.4.2 on it and the owner was fed up with the purple haze.
One of my close friends also has an M7 but he never bothered upgrading so it still has 4.1.2 on it : no purple haze, even when using ZOE! Ha... interesting! It didn't take me long to load a 4.1.2 onto mine and tadaa... no more purple haze in low light, but of course I'm not using HTC's firmware either so no ZOE.
Since ZEO allegedly overheats some components and I didn't have ZOE on my vanilla 4.1.2, why not make the entire phone overheat in the sun while using it : I mounted the M7 on my car's dash and had it film the road during my commute. It didn't take long to be burning hot. It was so hot I had to use my car's AC to cool it down before I could touch it again. If heat damages any component and as a consequence causes purple haze in dim light, surely my device must have been toast. But it wasn't. Still no purple haze while filming and lava hot, and no purple haze either while cool and shooting photos in low light.
The moment I loaded a vanilla 4.4.2 back on it: purple haze!

The next day I also tried loading Honycomb and although a bunch of things didn't work such as the volume buttons for some reason, the stock camera did work and it was without purple haze in low light (just a crappy resolution).

It took a certain amount of time to do the loading/testing so I hope you appreciate my feedback.
I won't draw any conclusions but surely you can.

Very interesting! But, your method of disproving a hardware problem still has it's faults, because ultimately, you disabled the Zoe feature! And, ultimately Zoe was where the problem lied. I'm thinking that's why HTC is just replacing those modules, no questions asked!

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zufdaddy

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Here in India HTC will replace the camera for only those who have warranty. Mine is out of warranty, so they said I need to pay. I already paid for the phone, which you at HTC couldnt build with quality materials in the first place. Only the outer case is of quality stuff. Customer satisfaction should be the ultimate aim for HTC or any other company.
 

Nathan Sandland

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My phone is out of warranty (though I'm pretty sure the purple tinting started happening before the warranty expired). I called HTC, and the rep told me that I would need to send it in, but that once I had received a quotation from them that I could call back and try to negotiate a better price. I received a quotation for $90, so I called them back. The guy I talked to immediately put me on hold for a couple of minutes then came back and said it was being taken care of; that he just had to modify the repair to be an "in warranty" repair and that they would cover the cost. I didn't even have to recite my explanation for why I thought they should cover the cost--they just took care of it without a discussion. Perhaps they've realized that it's worthwhile to just take care of this problem that in my opinion should have been handled via a recall. Or perhaps I just lucked out with really nice support reps.
 

CHILLYWILL_95831

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My phone is out of warranty (though I'm pretty sure the purple tinting started happening before the warranty expired). I called HTC, and the rep told me that I would need to send it in, but that once I had received a quotation from them that I could call back and try to negotiate a better price. I received a quotation for $90, so I called them back. The guy I talked to immediately put me on hold for a couple of minutes then came back and said it was being taken care of; that he just had to modify the repair to be an "in warranty" repair and that they would cover the cost. I didn't even have to recite my explanation for why I thought they should cover the cost--they just took care of it without a discussion. Perhaps they've realized that it's worthwhile to just take care of this problem that in my opinion should have been handled via a recall. Or perhaps I just lucked out with really nice support reps.

So, you think they should have recalled over a million HTC M7s? But, the purple tinting wad a known defect on the M7 and HTC should repair that defect whether in warranty or not!

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spacemanspork

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I had my little brother send his phone in. I noticed he was posting pictures that were almost entirely purple and I knew he was still under warranty.

Basically this is what they said.

First, they walk you thru a few possible solutions if it's a software issue. Reset this, change this setting, etc. Then they ask you to test it out again. If you still have the purple haze, then they tell you they need to fix it because it's a hardware issue.

They give you 3 options:

Option 1: Send your phone in. Be without your phone for 10 or so days. They'll fix your phone and then send back YOUR phone.

Option 2: Send in your phone. The second they get your phone (should be 2 days), they'll send you a brand new phone (2 days). $29 I believe.

Option 3: They send you a brand new phone. You set it up and make sure it's dandy. If it is, you send your phone back to them. $29 + $599 hold on your account. The hold is to make sure you send the defective phone back. If you don't within 2 weeks I think, then they'll charge you the hold amount. When they get the defective phone back, they release the hold.

He did option 3. His new phone works fine (for now). I asked what happens if the tint comes back and they said it shouldn't but if it does then it's those 3 options again. Kind of sucks you have to pay $29, but it's worth it I think.
 

fungo45

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I've got this issue as well. I bought it used, and have no idea if it's still within the 1 year warranty. What is the number that people are calling to get to HTC? The main customer service line appears to be 1 (866) 449-8358 in the US, but wanted to make sure this is the best choice.
 

67GTV

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That is the correct phone number. It is listed as the "HTC's support team" phone number on my repair confirmation. They will be able to determine the warranty status from your phone's serial no.

I anxiously await the return of my blue M7 from HTC's only authorized repair center in the U.S., (CTS-PCS located in Houston, TX). I waited (debated based on horror stories) to send mine in until my warranty had almost expired. They received my phone 10/6/14, repaired and shipped it on 10/9/14. UPS indicates my phone should be delivered to me by tomorrow. In answer to my inquiries whether the heat issue could resurface, I was told I would have 30-60 days warranty on the repair work. :\

My low-light pictures looked terribly purple with a noticeable grid pattern. I never use Zoe, so I attribute the heat issue to playing games on my phone. I have since purchased a used Nexus 7 to game on.
 
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Mark Kilner

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I bought an HTC One in Jakarta, Indonesia. Having downloaded the Zoe app, I got the dreaded purple haze. I took it to the HTC Service Center where I was told it was the camera. I suggested it was the motherboard only to be told it was definitely the camera. Either the service counter staff are mushrooms or HTC's poor service standards are to blame.

I was told the parts were on order and to call back in 2 weeks. I called back and was told to call back in 2 more weeks. I called back and was told to call back in two weeks yet again. I demurred and told then it had been over a month and that Taiwan wasn't that far from Indonesia. DHL could get parts to Jakarta in 24 hours guaranteed. They said OK we'll call you. Still no call.

It's the poor service standards. Caveat emptor
 

litig8or98

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Finally sent mine in, about four months out of warranty. Had started to get the purple tint, and although it wasn't bad, as my warranty was coming up in June, I investigated sending it in. My carrier convinced me to simply take a refurb swap, only the refurb was in worse shape than my current phone, so I sent it back...only by then, I was out of warranty.

Fast forward to last week; I called HTC, and they set me up with their authorized repair centre (Canada). Sent it in Thursday overnight, and today they called. $120 to repair the "defective" camera, as well as the defective speakers (didn't know there was a problem with the speakers). I hate shelling out, but it'd cost $40 just to get it sent back unrepaired...for the extra $80, may as well, since I (otherwise) love the phone.

I only hope it won't look like a unibody phone that's been cracked open.