RIP Paul’s HTC 10, welcome new HTC 10
I’m going to preface this with I’m a computer technician by trade, I’ve worked the innards of some phones and know how to follow an iFixit guide. I also did a lot of reading before deciding to have the phone repaired locally because I was probably going to mess it up. I have two kids. They were going to mess it up.
I contacted several places about repairing my HTC 10 (battery was going. It’s bulged out slightly. Out of warranty. Yadda yadda yadda. I got back several places refused to work on them, and one store owner calling me up to tell me to not risk and pay HTC another couple hundred to repair it as the screen/digitizer would break every single time and they probably would send me a refurb anyway.
I found one place that had done the repairs before and claimed to have a perfect record. Unfortunately I broke that streak.
Monday I took the HTC 10 in for a battery replacement. I watched the fellow expertly pull the phone apart. I had one technician complaint during the entire thing which considering how it’s my job to complain about things let’s just say he did a much better job than I would have expected.
The battery was removed, handed to me for inspection, I can see where the thing’s starting to bulge. Phone was dying at 40%+ and the battery couldn’t keep a charge. It would drop from 100% to the mid 70’s in about an hour and a half which meant my screen off run time was about 4 hours max. I’d RUUed, ran a bunch of fake fixes, yadda yadda yadda it was the battery.
Battery replaced, screen didn’t work but the phone was booting (as per dire warnings.) They ordered a new digitizer/screen, got that in last night, and it’s toast. Even with brand new equipment from motherboard to screen no display. Both read the digitizer, neither display anything.
It was a good phone, except the battery, and HTC’s out of warranty support prices.
The company that helped my HTC 10 cross over will be replacing the unit. I’ll be getting my toast HTC 10 and seeing if I can unlock it via pattern blind, push a remote phone app to the thing, and grab some of the data on the unit. See if there’s anything remotely I can see that might be causing the issue.
My bet is when they were peeling back the tape strips that hold everything down one of the strips pulled a line and broke it. The connections are hair thin. This is why I wouldn’t attempt this myself. That or the heating of the unit to melt the glue toasted something that was already on its way out. I don’t think it’s that but could be.
Anyway supposedly flawless HTC 10 unit coming in from Sprint to replace it at the store’s cost.
From my reading of dealings with repairs with HTC I’m going to guess replacements happen for the same reasons with a fairly high frequency, so I’m not particularly upset since the place is making it right.
Meanwhile everything I had on that phone is lost… oh wait, no there it is… I backed everything up and copied all pictures off before I took it in.
