[One (M7) Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] seroaddict:
The HTC One M7 is my third Android smartphone, and as pretty and fast as it is, it is easily the worst phone I've ever owned. I have run into several critical hardware and software problems, and my experiences with the support, and particularly the repair, departments have been abysmal. I was curious whether other people have had these problems.

I was one of the many people with the purple tint. Seeing the threads on here, I opted to grin and bear that situation until some software fix came. I should have sent the phone back immediately for a refund and never looked back.

My second mistake was accepting the 4.06.1540.2 OTA update. That update made it impossible for me to decrypt and boot my encrypted storage. Desperate to restore my month's worth of data, I sent the device into the repair center at my own cost, to repair the camera, and get some kind of fix for the software situation.

Of course, the repair took two weeks, and they casually wiped my storage, so that was a waste. Worse, when sealing my phone back up (from the camera replacement), they made it so my volume rocker would not respond to an "up" press. And for added hell, I found that the 4.06.1540.2 firmware silenced all call audio, making my smartphone a post-phone.

I eventually built up the courage to upgrade to 4.06.1540.3 once that was released, restoring call capability. Months later, as I creeped toward my 1-year warranty limit, I elected to send the phone back to deal with the volume rocker, and a micro-usb slot that had become quite finicky. Third mistake, and by far the biggest.

The repair center was even slower this time, taking over two weeks to make an assessment, and eventually charging me $109 to swap my device because they claimed that superficial damage on a non-intersecting corner of the device "could" have caused my other issues, thus invalidating their warranty obligations. I relented, having spent such a long time without my phone, and got a bright, shiny, new(ish) phone.

Of course, I didn't trust them as far as I could throw them, so I put the new device through their own battery of tests (available from the dialer at *#*#3424#*#*). Unfortunately, what I didn't realize until I took a road trip was that location was only working because of Google's excellent WiFi and mobile network assistance, and that GPS does not work, at all. Since I was unlocked, I took a full backup, and then performed a factory reset in TWRP. Of course, I then realized that the /sdcard/ path is not a separate partition, but a symlink to a /data/ subfolder, and so I lost the backups in the reset. Thanks, TWRP! And, GPS still doesn't work.

I'm now begging support for yet another RMA, and am dreading to hear how much money they will be extorting from me this time around, for a device that was probably sent back for broken GPS by its last owner.

I have spent countless hours on dealing with the flaws of these two M7 phones, particularly haggling with HTC Support, begging them to do what they are legally obligated to do, and reconfiguring the devices after countless factory resets. I bought direct from HTC, and that has not been helpful in the least. Clearly they are more comfortable with the carriers handling customers.

The experience has been bad enough that I am seriously contemplating buying an iPhone next, because these Android manufacturers just don't care about customer support or satisfaction. My last two Androids were not this catastrophically bad, but they were also treated with the utmost indifference by their manufacturers (Motorola and Samsung).

Have you had similar experiences with HTC? How do you handle these problems when they come up? Do I need to hire a lawyer to get a proper repair?