[Sprint HTC One (M9)] mswlogo:
I'm sure some of you are bored with this, but I post this for others in case it happens to them or is happening to them on any phone. Don't put up with it.

Because I lived with this broken M9 for 6 months. It was usable but not reliable in certain situations.

It is nice that HTC has the Ut-Oh program and I have long email exchange going with some rep at HTC explaining some of my history the past couple years.

If you want to use it, just say you dropped it or dunked it. It was fairly easy. Oh by the way I got the email today that it shipped.

I did a whole bunch more testing, mostly making sure it was in a deep sleep on LTE (our signal at the house (and work) varies between 1-3 bars on LTE and similar on CDMA).

It has not failed yet. Old one was almost 100% repeatable, once I figured it out.

Looks like I'll be keeping 1 foot in the door with HTC.

Also in EPST under ##DEBUG# it shows the phone as not Refurbish, 0 Hr's etc.

Ramble: In the electronics industry things are "Binned" chips that can't go as fast are just labeled as slower processors.

And there are tiers and thresholds to determine the bins things get put in.

Sometimes you might be very close to the threshold and sometimes way over (that's how some folks can way overclock chips while others can't).

It's not binary. With "Analog" antennas things can be even less binary.

Was this just a weak but passing spec M9? And the new M9 a strong one? (because we often put the phone in it's limits of weak signal).

Or was this phone simply broken?

I really wonder. I did compare LTE signal strengths and they looked similar and they were both bouncing around a lot.

But I don't recall if I compared CDMA (I think I did and would remember if they were significantly different).

I really wanted to see what would happen trying yet again another M9 and it appears it's good enough to be a reliable phone for my wife.

Usually my wife is behind one generation and every year the radio technology seems to change lately. So I could not compare them.

Now I'll get to see long term how same generation phones act in a wide variety of situations.

I see a couple members frequently saying HTC radios are sub-par. I don't believe that (even after having issues with two HTC phones 1st M8 and 1st M9).

Many of them are the exact same Qualcomm chipset each year. Only difference is antenna implementation, which I'm sure Qualcomm fairly rigidly specs.

Oh FYI, I sent the old M9 back with fresh RUU and S-Off and I didn't dunk it ;). I hope I don't regret that and they gripe about it.

I'll just play dumb and say it didn't work after getting wet, and it must have dried out.

This would have been a nightmare to go to a Sprint store with (with S-Off complicating things even further) because if the phone was awake it would work equal to G4.

And waiting for it to sleep long enough with appropriate signals is not easy to repeat at will. Which is why it took me 6 months to finally do something.

Kept hoping for new firmware to fix it because it was so subtle.

Oh, my wife is complaining about the Notification Light not being visible. I agree. If you set the phone down in front of you say a 18" away flat you can't see it at all.

You have to be above it.

I forget how M8 was. M8 was black, M9 is gold so M8 might have showed better contrast to see it. Other than that she seems fine with it so far.

Or there might be a little variation in how deep light is behind grill.

I don't plan on running sunshine this time. She barely needs root. She only really wants Tether for the rare occasion we are on the road and she is on call for work.

And tether works with Wifi Tether Router now, possibly less traceable too.

It's staying completely stock except for TWRP doing root. Less issues with warranty is that happens.

I won't upgrade unless I see a new RUU and will use the RUU to do so. Takes about 30 minutes to backup, lock, RUU, unlock and restore (well, maybe an hour ;) )