CrunchGear

Hi,

I really can’t understand or agree with the “you get what you pay for” line. Perhaps some people have just misunderstood the issue - the whole point is that we’re clearly NOT getting what we pay for, since a device that costs half as much as my HTC Touch Cruise can currently perform twice as well!

Many HTC devices are among the most EXPENSIVE on the market, so it’s not unreasonable to assume we’re paying for some of the best performance on the market too. This assumption is supported by a direct comparison to other manufacturers’ devices with similar specs and prices, and by HTC’s own marketing and promotional material. We’re currently NOT getting what we pay for, since these devices do NOT operate as HTC’s marketing and promotional materials suggest or, more importantly, as the devices’ own manuals explicitly state!! (My HTC doesn’t properly play ANY of the video formats that the manual says it should, and that’s just one example).

If I bought a brand new car and paid a premium because I knew it had an engine and transmission that could achieve 200 miles per hour, I would be VERY annoyed to say the least if I discovered that my brand new HTC car would in fact only do 20 mph before it started struggling. I would be even more annoyed if I saw other manufacturers using exactly the same engine and transmission and getting far better performance, and then only charging a fraction of what I’d paid!! At the very least I would demand a product recall and fix, and if that was not forthcoming I would demand my money back, as I’m sure most other people would.

THE WHOLE POINT IS THAT WE ARE ABSOLUTELY NOT GETTING WHAT WE PAID FOR!!! If we were, everyone would be happy. HTC either need to lower their prices (and offer a rebate to existing customers) to reflect their devices’ new market position in terms of performance, or they need to make their devices operate at a level that customers can reasonably expect from units that cost so much money. At the very least, they need to be more honest about the devices’ performance in their marketing.

Regardless of where you stand on the actual performance issue, HTC’s dismissive and arrogant attitude over this has been absolutely appalling. Whatever the reasons, many thousands of their customers are clearly dissatisfied, and apparently HTC’s attitude has so far been to simply dismiss or ignore their concerns. For example, the HTC Touch Cruise is STILL being marketed as offering a ‘rich multimedia experience’, yet a recent official statement from HTC attempted to dismiss customers’ concerns over unacceptable video playback by stating that the affected units were never really intended as multimedia devices!! Apparently it’s the devices’ connectivity and not their multimedia capabilities that are their main selling point, so we should all go away and stop whining. (If you Google HTC’s official statements on the issue, you’ll see what I mean). Apart from anything else, video playback is only a tiny part of the issue - EVERY aspect of my phone’s operation is unacceptably slow and ‘laggy’, INCLUDING connectivity in terms of the Phone, Contacts and web browsing features.

Another official statement even commented that customers should realise that developing drivers to fix these customer concerns isn’t easy and would take time and money, so consequently HTC aren’t going to bother!! Regardless of the actual issues, how can any company believe that this kind of attitude in official statements is advisable or even acceptable?! After all, we’re not talking about a handful of devices with a manufacturing defect - we’re talking about EVERY SINGLE ONE BEING BAD!!!

HTC seem unwilling to do what they are morally, ethically (and possibly legally) obliged to do, and perhaps a class action is the only way to combat the unmitigated arrogance of companies like this. Personally, I don’t really care how it’s achieved - I just want my HTC device to operate in the way I was lead to believe it would.

200% agree with the above. And if the HTC attitude doesn’t change, my next PDA certainly won’t be an HTC. That’s probably the best answer to this issue, and the one that will annoy the most HTC people. Sad to come to this conclusion.

I gave my 16 year old daughter my ATT Tilt because she can use the GPS for navigating. She is a new driver. She had been using the HTC 2125 smartphone. She says she hates the Tilt because everything is so slow. She showed me how slow it is to open the keyboard. The screen has to re-orient. By the time it re-orients, she’s lost half of what she’s keyed in.

My HTC Wizard/8125 is also much faster at everything that the Tilt. The Tilt has a faster processor than the Wizard, and I expected much better performance, but it does everything more slowly.

Yes, it connects to the 3G data network, and it has GPS. It’s a beautifully designed device, but it’s performance sucks.

HTC should be ashamed, and worried about it’s customer base. It will probably loose a lot of customers because of this.

In all of the discussion I have seen so far about the device driver issue, an overlooked area of concern is the complicity of the reseller in the driver debacle.

For example, in January I contacted HTC support (at the insistence of AT&T that they were not responsible, which I did not and do not believe) regarding despicable and totally unacceptable Bluetooth performance. HTC support insisted that it was not their problem, as AT&T had declined the HTC driver for the device and utilized another driver of their own choosing. Talk about a case of fingerpointing and denying responsibility!

The deivice sellers have a moral, and almost certainly legal, obligation to privide support for the devices they sell/resell, over and above the “It’s not our responsibility. Go talk to the manufactuirer” copout. In the US there are laws regarding truth in advertising, as well as “merchantability and fitness for purpose”. I’m not a lawyer, but it sounds to me like the Tilt comes up short on both counts.