This is a 7.30.2017 update to the original post, below. Unfortunately, this thread seems to have morphed into complaints about refunds and questioning HTC, generally. My comments about the design/engineering decisions made by HTC were just that. In my 7 years of using only HTC phones, I have found their tech support prompt and excellent, the phones highly reliable and a pleasure to use - except for the issues with batteries that decline too much after the first year and are not easily replaced because they are cemented to the case back, underneath the motherboard. HTC is a fine company that makes great products. They just need the design/engineering folks to get out more and see what happens in the real world. FWIW, FedEx delivered my U11 on June 17 and my CC was refunded by DRI-HTC on June 21. I find it strange that several folks on this thread have had difficulties obtaining refunds. The LG G6 continues to be a decent replacement - interesting to use a non-HTC phone after 7 years - but I cannot say that I love it. I may break with my two-years-or-bust tradition and get the Pixel 2 (made by HTC) when it comes out this Fall. Original post follows:
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For the past six years, I have enjoyed my HTC phones immensely (Incredible/DNA/M9) and have been looking for their new flagship for many months. The build quality, features and performance have been great, although a couple of design issues have always lingered: gluing the battery to the case back, under the motherboard would be fine except that the DNA/M9 batteries were both on life support after two years and I have always had issues with their emphasis on sound - it is a phone/PDA and if I want great stereo I use earphones. Seriously, how many people ever had a movie night on their cell phone? For the M9, it just meant that the phone was taller - space that could have been occupied by a battery or a design permitting its easy replacement. Which brings me to the U11. It is fast and I love the fingerprint reader that I have envied on iPhones. My aging laptop and the new TSA Global Entry devices have issues with my barely-there prints, but this works fast and flawlessly. So why not keep it? Let me count the ways:
Last week a friend got an LG G6. It is the kind of design that I like in a phone, the clean, functional, elegant lines of a device that we all use constantly. It is the design used in the HTC One series and in the iPhone and in many of the newer competitors' phones. Why muck up a personal device by making it an artwork? It is a phone/PDA. I use it for everything, every day, many times per day. I don't admire its backside.
Reports say that the included earbuds are great when programmed to the ear - probably a revolution started by HTC -and the Edge Sense functions are nifty. I never got that far. After spending many hours trying to see the phone and a coupd of long days trying to get it set up, only to find that it and VZW would never play nicely together, i gave up when I saw the G6 and was instantly struck by the realization that this is what I hoped the U11 would be.
I wish HTC all the best. They have done many wonderful things and they still build great devices. But they need to get out of the art business and out of the theater sound business and get back to the phone business. I hope they do that in the next two years because I would love to return. Just not today.
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For the past six years, I have enjoyed my HTC phones immensely (Incredible/DNA/M9) and have been looking for their new flagship for many months. The build quality, features and performance have been great, although a couple of design issues have always lingered: gluing the battery to the case back, under the motherboard would be fine except that the DNA/M9 batteries were both on life support after two years and I have always had issues with their emphasis on sound - it is a phone/PDA and if I want great stereo I use earphones. Seriously, how many people ever had a movie night on their cell phone? For the M9, it just meant that the phone was taller - space that could have been occupied by a battery or a design permitting its easy replacement. Which brings me to the U11. It is fast and I love the fingerprint reader that I have envied on iPhones. My aging laptop and the new TSA Global Entry devices have issues with my barely-there prints, but this works fast and flawlessly. So why not keep it? Let me count the ways:
- It is too big. There are Plus sizes and regular sizes and this is in-between.
- It is slippery, really slippery. I put the phone face down on a pad of yellow paper. The side of the pad was raised less than .25 inches by a mouse pad and i watched in amazement as it slowly crawled off the paper. Oleophobic has become papyryphobic. Of course with a case, that shoud be fine.
- The Amazing Silver is just not my color. I called and went to Sprint a few times to find out when the demo days would be; nobody knew. I found one on the HTC site and went then - the store did not know until the rep arrived that she would be there. She brought only the Blue phone, and knew little about it - it was a 3rd party demo contractor. I returned to the store a few days after Sprint began selling the U11, just to see the Black phone. They didn't have any. HTC: this was a very poor rollout. Admittedly, I like the Apple Silver and the HTC Gunmetal Gray, but I just don't understand why HTC spent a fortune developing the back side of the device and making it so garish. It's a phone|PDA, not a Chihuly exhibit.
- The dual SIM/SD tray is two disasters waiting to happen. If you change SIMS while travelling, it is going to get bent because it is no longer a tray, but a frame that makes insertion a hassle. If it had to be a dual tray, make it sideways, like the LG G6, which inserts more easily without the SD Card trying to pop up. And it won't be long before somebody puts a paperclip through the top speaker by mistake. That tray should be on the side.
- The flip clock font got ugly when it was stretched to fill the 5X2 widget grid. Having had an actual flip clock long ago, I fell in love with it and have used that excellent widget for 4 + years. Perhaps a different launcher would solve the problem, but I have already invested days in this phone, with increasing disappointment.
- The Favorites widget has disappeared, again. I have had it next to my Home screen for 4 years - you get nice, large tiles with a picture and can select the default action for each recipient. Very convenient. HTC discontinued it in a 9.6.2016 update and I was able to recover it for the M9 but, like the Monty Python parrot, it is no more.
- It doesn't really work on Verizon - see thread "Verizon certified my arse." It did not work at all with my VZW SIM card. HTC updated the firmware to xxx.4 to address connectivity and solved that issue, but not the many others. I spent 2.5 hours with VZW trying to recover my VZW Cloud backup data, to no avail. After the xxx.4 update, I spent another 45 minutes, got a trouble ticket opened and still no joy there. This is largely a VZW issue; they are very proprietary. I have used SIM cards in my DNA and M9 without difficulty in many countries, but coming home I had to get a new SIM card for the DNA (the old one would not re-provision itself on VZW). This cannot be unknown to HTC, so my take is that they made a design decision to punt VZW customers.
- It plays music when cold-started, letting everybody within earshot know that I have turned on my HTC phone! The DNA started that absurd feature; when turned on, in a very loud and obnoxious voice, it screamed "Droidddd!" It was a major turnoff that could not be turned off. I found myself trying to smother the DNA when turning it on in public, so I was delighted to find that the M9 started up silently. The U11 plays three notes when started, then plays them again after the lock screen. Why? I called HTC a couple of times to see if they had enough complaints to stop the music, but no.
- HTC redesigned the keyboard, apparently for the sake of redesigning the keyboard. The M9 was a big improivement over the DNA, but the U11 changes make no sense to me. I wear reading glasses and, after learning the long-press characters on the M9, HTC just mixed them all up for fun.
Last week a friend got an LG G6. It is the kind of design that I like in a phone, the clean, functional, elegant lines of a device that we all use constantly. It is the design used in the HTC One series and in the iPhone and in many of the newer competitors' phones. Why muck up a personal device by making it an artwork? It is a phone/PDA. I use it for everything, every day, many times per day. I don't admire its backside.
Reports say that the included earbuds are great when programmed to the ear - probably a revolution started by HTC -and the Edge Sense functions are nifty. I never got that far. After spending many hours trying to see the phone and a coupd of long days trying to get it set up, only to find that it and VZW would never play nicely together, i gave up when I saw the G6 and was instantly struck by the realization that this is what I hoped the U11 would be.
I wish HTC all the best. They have done many wonderful things and they still build great devices. But they need to get out of the art business and out of the theater sound business and get back to the phone business. I hope they do that in the next two years because I would love to return. Just not today.
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