Database Users

Is the Universal worth $200 ?

Like a lot of people I've broken the mini-usb port in my Uni, thank goodness for Blue tooth,. I called the HTC service number to see if I could get them to re solder the port back on they said I need a new motherboard. My Uni works fine except that the batteries are slowly dying, but luckily I have a stand alone battery charger. In a nut shell the mother board is $200 is it worth it? There are so many new phones coming out that it really doesn't make sense to spend the money on it, but on the other hand rumors that TMO 3G network may support it give me a good reason to keep it. I truly like this phone and really don't want to give it up quite yet, so I ask you what would you do?
Oh yeah when I asked the service rep if was a G3/G4 board he had no clue the good part about it is that the US service center is in my town so I could drop it off and pick it up almost the same day.

Harry Tuttle said:
Like a lot of people I've broken the mini-usb port in my Uni, thank goodness for Blue tooth,. I called the HTC service number to see if I could get them to re solder the port back on they said I need a new motherboard. My Uni works fine except that the batteries are slowly dying, but luckily I have a stand alone battery charger. In a nut shell the mother board is $200 is it worth it? There are so many new phones coming out that it really doesn't make sense to spend the money on it, but on the other hand rumors that TMO 3G network may support it give me a good reason to keep it. I truly like this phone and really don't want to give it up quite yet, so I ask you what would you do?
Oh yeah when I asked the service rep if was a G3/G4 board he had no clue the good part about it is that the US service center is in my town so I could drop it off and pick it up almost the same day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course it worth!!!
Go for it!

how bad is it? and where do you live? send me a pm if you want to keep it private. the reason i ask is if the pads on the board are ok, resoldering the connector is easy. for an experienced tech takes 5 minutes with a coffee break in the middle. lol. if you'd rather, i'll fix it for a lot less. let me know. i'll need to see pictures to confirm too.

Yes,
Soldering is quite easy. If you don't know how to do it, show it to someone with soldering experience.
The other choice is eBay: I bought my second unit for 142 Euro, which is about 200 US$. That was the price for a full functioning phone!
You might try to buy one with a broken screen for much less and exchange the board yourself.
I think 200 US$ for a new board is too expensive.
Cheers,
vma

If its working it surely worth it..

Yeah, I'll keep it...
When I talked to the HTC rep he said it was $200 to replace the mother board; but another rep called me back and said that HTC no longer supports it. The North American repair center is in my area, so they said take it over there and see, i haven't had time but i will just to see what the quote will be. as for the device itself, it still works I need a new battery barely holds a charge for the entire day, but it still an awesome device. But there are some new ones coming out ie. SonyX1 Eten's dual sim phone the Omnia and a host of others
I've had it for about 2 years and very little problems. Thanks for everyone support and will definitely keep it.

You're with T-Mo US, personally, I'd get a G1. $180, and it has Android... It's sickkkk.

"Not all the shiny things are gold"
At least now
Quote (in a year or two that Android OS gets mature & grows, and better devices made for it...)

Black93300ZX said:
You're with T-Mo US, personally, I'd get a G1. $180, and it has Android... It's sickkkk.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, Android looks good but I've learned a long time ago wait for all the bugs to go away before diving in. When Android has a form factor like the Uni I'll be all over it, I'm not a slider fan.

Me neither - either a candybar or a mini-laptop for me. Repair enough slides and flips not to ever want to touch one. As far as Universals are concerned, it's all in the definition. Once you will stop thinking of it as a cellphone and instead think of it as a mini-laptop and introduce it as such to your friends - you'll feel the advantages. You won't believe how many comments along the lines of "Wow, that's a tiny laptop you have there" and "How cool is that" I get every time I get my JasJar out. And then, of course, I go on and on about how it's so much better than a laptop, how I have everything I need not to use my computer, how I chat to my friends overseas on SKYPE, and on and on... haha
No doubt it is worth every bloody cent.

HTC customer service sux...
So this will be my last rant on this subject. I call customer service to get an RA# I explained to the rep what the problem is (note I have an O2 Exec in North America), she said that they didn't support that model, So I explained that its the same thing as the Tmobile MDA Pro at which point she says they support that model and gives me the RA#, but explains that they may not have the parts for it? I go to the repair center give them the RA# and wait after about 20mins. this lady comes out and says that we don't work on that phone but will have somebody else talk to me. The Product manager comes out and tells me that my phone is European and they don't work on it , at this point I tell him that its a MDA Pro with just a different housing he still disagrees that its a different phone that its not an MDA Pro(I'm in disbelief) so I asked if he had a motherboard for an Imate Jasjar or a Qtek or Vodaphone, basically every derivative of the Universal. He still argues that those are all different phones and they won't work,well since I was on my lunch break and did want to get pissed off i explained to him that he needs to understand the previous product line and that when I come back I want to talk to someone who knows what they are talking about.

I too can repair the USB connector for you, I'm UK based.
If you want it fixing let me know.

Replacment LCD screen

Okay, just purchased my first Snap (s521 - purchased off eBay, quite sure it's an Asian version) a couple of weeks ago and been thoroughly happy with it. Haven't taken the plunge to HardSPL it and put on a cooked ROM (just concerned I suppose - shouldn't be though, I know). Yesterday with all the excitement of boxing day, managed to crack the LCD screen, and now can only see half the screen (the other half is white with a couple of really nice ink marks - would probably look like a butterfly if I looked hard enough.....lol ).
Been searching real hard on the internet, and can't seem to find a replacement for it any where. I'm from Australia, and only 1 carrier has the right's to the Snap here at the moment, therefore general repair shops don't seem to want to know about it.
Can anyone recommend a place to purchase a new screen? Any and all help greatly appreciated.
Cheers, Chris.

Hi
Im still looking for a replacement screen for one of ours as well. The only place in AU i can find is www.fonebiz.com.au
They quoted me $135 to install a replacement screen. They won't sell the screens seperatley though.
Hopefully it helps.
Matt

Thanx for that Matt.
I sent an email off to them this weekend, and I was waiting for a reply. They are supposedly the only authorised HTC repair centre in Australia, but I've read many bad reports about them in other forums. But I suppose $135 is far better then several $100's to get a new one. Fonebiz pretty much has the market to themselves in Australia until HTC allows other businesses to sell the Snap (once the contract with Telstra ends). If I come up with anything, I'll let you know as well.
I'm just surprised that I can't seem to find any for sale any where in the world. Not on eBay, through various stores in other countries - it's almost like we have a very specialised phone, with very little after sales / parts need.

Yep i would have thought it would have been easier to get a screen from the US or HK but no luck.
Ive had nothing but issues with fonebiz in trying to get phones replaced that are dropping reception and freezing. Hopefully you get through ok, they were quick to reply to my emails during business hours so you may need to wait till tomorrow for a response.

go to http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=405566
and
http://cnn.cn

Another reff
http://www.mikechannon.net/page4.html
http://www.jetcitydevices.com/htc-snap/screen-repair

Thanx Harunjo,
After many calls and email to the Australian HTC help line, and then later to the SEA help line, I find out that my phone's serial number shows that the phone was destined for sale in Indonesia. No repair shop in Australia can source the screen except for the official repair centre, which refuses to touch the phone as it was purchased from overseas. Therefore I had 2 choices;
1. Send it to Indonesia to get fixed - Couldn't do as the phone number is not connected.
2. Go through one of the Global Repair Centres.
After contacting Honk Kong, UK, and trying to contact US (really bad time difference with Australia), I decided to follow through with the email contacts with SEA help, and just sent the phone off to Singapore today. Hopefully I will get it back within a few weeks.
One thing I'll say is that every person I spoke to at HTC were more then willing to do everything they could to help me, I just suppose it has everything to do with the whole repair / exclusivity / contract deal with Telstra in Australia - plus a fairly arrogant phone repair company that thinks they are so extremely fantastic that they decide how things work - wish I had a business that was so profitable that I could turn fully paying customers away on a whim (just ranting, couldn't believe how hard it was to try and get this phone fixed - seam to get a lot of bad press through forums does this repair business).
Anyways, as much as the whole experience may have turned me off HTC phones (as this is my first), I like them so much already, that I'll stick with them, just make sure the next phone I get is from Australia or has been out in Australia for a while and has full repair support.

Refurbished or New?

For those of you that have gone through warranty was the device you got new or was it refurbished? Because I've been having freezing issues, loss of 3G and things like that so I called. T-mobile and the guy said it would be most likely new since the HD2 has been out for only a month and takes awhile to get a device refurbished.

KidTech said:
For those of you that have gone through warranty was the device you got new or was it refurbished? Because I've been having freezing issues, loss of 3G and things like that so I called. T-mobile and the guy said it would be most likely new since the HD2 has been out for only a month and takes awhile to get a device refurbished.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't believe anything these bozos tell you. They will contradict the [email protected] out of each other if you talk with more than one of them... this just goes to show you the technical ability of these people. Keep in mind that they don't carry too many Wm for a reason... they cannot support them since they don't have the knowledge to do so.
If they told you that it takes a while to refurbish them because the device has only been out for 1 month, you can go back to them and say "how about you get someone from Europe to help you guys out a bit? They have had the device for a lot longer and still have been unable to solve th issues"

Thanks for the input, i agree with your I asked the guy when a software update will be handed out, he said Microsoft is working on a update and they will hand it out. I was life wtff? But anyone else know? Also how do i reset my phone and back everything up?

I was also told that the HD2 was too new to have refurbished ones sent out. When I received the replacement I was disappointed with the packaging. It looked like it had been handled carelessly. I'll probably keep my original since new sim card installed haven't had any problems. Still have couple more days to decide.

While they may not have any/many phones available that have been "refurbished" (repaired due to some fault), I know they have a ton of phones that were returned but didn't have any issue requiring repair. These are referred to as "NIF" (no issue found) units, and can find their way into the replacement-unit pipeline much quicker than ones that get refurbished.
I suspect that's what whodanu got, and what many others will get. The units get a simple hard-reset and wipe-down essentially, and then certified to ship back out to people who need replacements.

[Q] Screen NOT RESPONDING

Hello everyone,
My hd2 was running fine for the past (when did it come out?) and all of a sudden after putting it into sleep mode (clicking the red button) the screen became unresponsive after turning it on again.
Before, the screen would only be unresponsive only after putting the phone in sleep mode, but now the screen is not responding wherever I am in the phone.
I did task 29 5 times with different roms/radios and no such luck.
I've read in other posts that it's a hardware AND a software problem, and there certainly ISN'T any solutions to the problem.
My question is that has anyone had an partial victories over this problem?
I'm currently in the middle east working and I'll be returning to Texas in a month.
I have a backup phone, the n97... what a wreck, I really hate that phone. If I see another "memory is full" warning, I'll blow my head off.
I guess karma is a *****, last month I was complaining hard about the HD2 (made a huge post... actually) and now it struck out on me, on the worst time.
A tip to anyone who's having a similar problem, use "MyMobiler" to control your phone via your computer, it saved me from losing my new contacts
Also, for the people who replaced their phones, do I need to call ahead of time to get a replacement or would I be able to simply walk into a T-mobile store and get a replacement? (I currently have an ongoing account with them)
Fun Fact: they sell the unbranded HD2 here for 1000 USD

mine started getting the "s.o.d." and requires a battery pull...never happened before and i'm on stock..a hard reset or replacement is in my future!

The battery pull used to worked, but not anymore. I feel that the body glove case might actually have something to do with this, since whenever there is a force pushed on the phone, that force will end up all around the screen and under the buttons.
I'm planning on selling the phone, so I guess it's a good thing. I'll get a brand new one.

Metallic-Force said:
I'm planning on selling the phone, so I guess it's a good thing. I'll get a brand new one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're planning on selling a touch phone, on which the touch screen doesn't work? Will you tell that to the buyer?
You should be able to exchange it for a new one under warranty.

anyone find a solution to this? I have now bought 2 hd2's that have done the exact same thing, I am on att network so I obviolsuy have no warranty, but this is rediculous, i love the phone when it works, just cant keep buying new phones that fail after 2 months, i now have 2 to send for repair to htc

cjindustry said:
anyone find a solution to this? I have now bought 2 hd2's that have done the exact same thing, I am on att network so I obviolsuy have no warranty, but this is rediculous, i love the phone when it works, just cant keep buying new phones that fail after 2 months, i now have 2 to send for repair to htc
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what makes you think its not under warranty? its not illegal to unlock and use on another network. if tmous refuse to fix it,(though by rights they should, if you hav e proof of purchase), its still got its manufacturers warranty, it is after all less than a year old. contact htc, the most that should cost is the cost of returning it to them.

VERY Impressed with HTC USA!

2 weeks ago to the day, I accidentally dropped my HD2. Nothing major.. I was actually sitting down when it happened, and the phone bumped my ankle then gently bumped the floor.. no big deal right? (It has a hard shell protector). Well, then as the phone flipped over, it bumped the edge of a table leg and damn! Four hairline cracks on the digitizer. And no more functionality though the LCD was fine and the phone was working but locked with no way to unlock it.
So, I weigh out the cost of repair vs. replacing it all together. Ultimately, it was cheaper to repair the screen.
Here is what blew my mind! Keep in mind that I am in Canada, I purchased the phone (T-Mobile Branded) on the 'net, it's unlocked, tweaked, and therefore there is no warranty.
So, on 04/01/2011, I contact HTC USA. To my surprise I actually get an American on the phone not some call center in a third world country. Wow! The person totally has their act together and in less than 10 minutes, I have a quote for the repair. Wow again! The rep explained everything in detail along with the mandatory disclaimers and while they were finishing up that, I'm receiving an email with all the necessary details and an RMA and Case number and shipping instructions. Wow yet again!
04/02/2011, I send the phone to the repair center in Texas. By 04/05/2011 at 10:50pm the phone has arrived at the repair center. The next morning, I get a call from HTC confirming the damage (which I knew), and they simply want a yes or no to go ahead with the repairs or not. By the afternoon, I have a FedEx tracking number, the phone is fixed and it's on its way back to me in Canada. Wow one more time!
04/11/2011 FedEx is at my door with my phone and HTC picked up the return shipping. Well.. you guessed it! Wow!
I am reconfiguring the phone back to the way I had it prior to sending it as I write this. It had been hard reset to factory spec which if fine and to be expected since they likely run various diag after repair.
So, for $120.00 + $25.00 Shipping, my phone is working again!
There's a case study for keeping our companies and their support centers on North American soil. There are dozens of companies I could list that should be taking notes. 8)

Nice to see a positive post like this. glad you got you HD2 repaired and are now back to modding it.

The whole repair process was nine days including weekends which I think is darn good!
That said, I was without the phone/device for 2 weeks. Talk about withdrawals! LOL!
Amazing how reliant we become on these devices. I use it to manage my daily activities for 3 businesses, 1 job, and my personal life/activities. I was on the verge of anxiety at times! Hehehehe!
At least I had my trusty HTC 8125 as backup and while it cannot connect to my cellular provider's network for phone/text/data, at least I had my calendars, tasks, notes, and contacts but I'll tell ya, talk about feeling tethered to a land line and out of the loop.
Yep, it just got HardSPL 4, my preferred radio flash, BsB, Total Commander, and a few other goodies back on and is now syncing with my Desktop and Exchange. d'-'
T-Macgnolia said:
Nice to see a positive post like this. glad you got you HD2 repaired and are now back to modding it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

It was not a bad price if it was a year ago, but I just picked up another near mint condition one for $150 with everything included off criaglist.
Sent from HTC HD2 with Android

Yeah, fair enough however, in Canada, the phone is not even available therefore my options were a bit more limited to purchase a new phone through a system where there is a little more security in knowing that if it turns out to be a bad deal, the purchase it covered. i.e. Buyer Protection from eBay or anything like that.
It's not like you can hop on a local Craigslist up here and find them readily.
So, the replacement cost for a whole phone was much higher, and the repair was the way to go.
coldest~~~ said:
It was not a bad price if it was a year ago, but I just picked up another near mint condition one for $150 with everything included off criaglist.
Sent from HTC HD2 with Android
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

You're a lucky guy.
I've had less good experiences in the Benelux here.
I called in mine for a screen and gps issue that is warranty issue since I run the official image on this HD2.
They didn't pickup the device twice as promised which drove me up the wall since I had my colleague involved and had to change several appointments with my clients for.
After I complained I got called by a customer care guy and was promised my device would be fixed one week after the pickup.
Called them this afternoon since we are one week further and my device was waiting for 2 parts but they didn't know which.
I wonder how many parts can break in the HD2 that direct to the fault. Guessing the main board and an LCD screen?
Well according to the customer service I will have to wait for the parts to come in.
I am so disappointed in the service and hole customer care after having a touch, touch pro, touch hd etc.
The touch pro which costed me over 500 Euro ended up in the trash after 3 failed repairs and numerous errors which where caused by the repair center. Sending it back to another address and name was only the tip of the iceberg.
Looking around for a dedicated Android device the LG optimus 2x looks good since it has a 24hour swap warranty.

Sorry to hear bro!
Heck, they even confirmed parts availability while on the initial call just prior to setting up the RMA. Maybe I just lucked out.
I work in the IT field and deal with all kinds of this stuff all the time and it has been years since I encountered this type of competence and efficiency. Don't know what else to say.
Have you checked out the Motorola Atrix?
http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/U...d-Services/Mobile-Phones/Motorola-ATRIX-US-EN
This thing looks cool! Watched several segments on it during the CES show back in February. My only question or disappointment was in all the promo vids from the CES they were touting Android 3 Honeycomb however at the Motorola site its tech specs list Android 2.2.
Good luck in your search!
lukesan said:
You're a lucky guy.
I've had less good experiences in the Benelux here.
I called in mine for a screen and gps issue that is warranty issue since I run the official image on this HD2.
They didn't pickup the device twice as promised which drove me up the wall since I had my colleague involved and had to change several appointments with my clients for.
After I complained I got called by a customer care guy and was promised my device would be fixed one week after the pickup.
Called them this afternoon since we are one week further and my device was waiting for 2 parts but they didn't know which.
I wonder how many parts can break in the HD2 that direct to the fault. Guessing the main board and an LCD screen?
Well according to the customer service I will have to wait for the parts to come in.
I am so disappointed in the service and hole customer care after having a touch, touch pro, touch hd etc.
The touch pro which costed me over 500 Euro ended up in the trash after 3 failed repairs and numerous errors which where caused by the repair center. Sending it back to another address and name was only the tip of the iceberg.
Looking around for a dedicated Android device the LG optimus 2x looks good since it has a 24hour swap warranty.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

thx for the headsup JayG!
Well lets say that I do the same work as you and do escallations and process realignments. If I could have a go in this whole thing .....
The Motorola looks interesting but try to find one in Europe.

I very agree with your assessment of HTC. My story is one better. I had bought my phone (HTC ELFIN P3452 TOUCH) in India. It had some battery charging issues and when on a whim I finally contacted HTC US, the lady told me that the warranty on the phone had expired 5 days back. I politely requested her if there is something she could do. She came back a few minutes later and told me she will take the phone as under warranty, but she will have to get back to me after figuring out where I should be sending the phone for repair as they figured HTC touch is not serviced anymore. I did not get a call back for 10 days and then I called back and explained my situation again and the previous call to a totally different lady. She gave me an RMA and asked me to ship to their TX facility. I got the phone back with brand new board in a week. But then I noticed a crack in the body. Since now the phone was under a 90 day warranty, I called back and explained the situation. They gave another RMA and so I sent it back. another week later, I get the phone back and it was brand new everything including the LCD and the phone. New IMEI.
HTC is top notch. So my current phone is HD2 and backup phone is Touch.