[HTC One X] sashank:
I agree with the OPs car and fuel tank capacity analogy and it makes good sense, but tell me, isn't it the responsibility of the car maker to put an adequately sized fuel tank in the car, taking into account all factors like space available in the design, size of the car and its mileage? Isn't it completely stupid and careless on the maker's part to make a huge car with a powerful engine, and put in a fuel tank with the same capacity as in a car that's half it's size with an engine that's half as powerful? How does the maker ensure that the car lasts for a long journey without requiring stops at the gas station every few hours? Everyone knows how irritating that can be, so why should it be any different with phones? You'd at least expect the expensive phone you buy to last for a day with moderate use. No one's asking for two days too. Just a day with moderate use is enough. But that's not the case. The One X, if unplugged early in the morning, lasts till evening at best with normal outdoor usage (take outdoor heat into account too) and requires charging. Even with all the battery saving tips like underclocking and the whole routine. All batteries degrade over time, but if the battery is of minimal capacity from the start, and then degrades, and is non-removable on top of it all, then we have a problem. It's just careless to design a phone this way.

I agree that they should have used more common sense. Their ideal lab tests and battery life results don't match up to real world usage. Look at the Droid DNA. 2100 mAh. That's ridiculous. I don't fault them for making the battery non-removable, because the design of One X requires it and it looks nice. But they could have fit a bigger battery in the phone even if it means increasing the thickness by 1-2 mm. One X battery life is horrendous, and the worst part is you can't just swap in a new battery if it runs out, unlike the Galaxy S3. The Droid DNA/DLX/M7 is going to suck just as much as the One X at battery life because even though it has a bigger battery, the hardware is that much more power hungry. Honestly it seems like the only manufacturer who really knows how to make excellent quality phones with good design (may not be the best, but very good) and great battery life is Motorola. Don't get me wrong, I'm not praising Motorola. Far from it. They have really ****ty policies towards development communities. But they really make well built, well designed phones with adequate or more than adequate batteries. I'm not just talking about the RAZR Maxx. While that IS an exceptional example, a lot of their phones have great batteries. If Motorola could put such a huge battery in the RAZR Maxx without compromising on the design (it's just slightly thicker and heavier than the RAZR), then there's no reason and no excuse for HTC not to. Samsung also used common sense with the Galaxy S3 by including a 2100 mAh removable battery. HTC's characteristic flaw in the past 2 years has been to put ****ty, tiny batteries in all their phones and claim it's due to design constraints. Every HTC phone has a much smaller battery than an equivalent phone by other manufacturers. Another HTC problem is to include include very low intern memory even to their flagship devices. Nexus One, HTC Desire, HTC Desire HD etc. It's their fault they put in such low system memory, and then they don't update their phones because they say the internal memory isn't enough for the new version. Ridiculous. Not to mention their unwillingness to update perfectly capable phones to newer versions. What's with the One V not receiving Jelly Bean while the One X and One S do? It was launched alongside them, and never got even one official version upgrade. Whatever happened to the Open Handset Alliance and Google guidelines for Android updates?

I like HTC, I like their designs, their build quality, and the usability and general feel of their phones. But they're being a crappy company in their policies relating to updates and full unlocking of bootloaders, no doubt about that, and they're also being dumb by not included adequate batteries and enough system memory. Some would say that the low system memory is a deliberate move on their part to avoid updating older phones. Anyway, I'm happy to see that with newer devices like the One series, they're being sensible in this regard and partition memory isn't really an issue anymore. But seriously HTC, stop trying to suck so much. There's a reason Motorola isn't all popular and significant anymore, although they make nice phones like you. Get rid of your ridiculous policies and give us once more a killer, truly open phone like the HD2. The amount on development that is still happening with that phone is insane.

Rant done.