HTC and the curse of the weak displays

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.