[HTC 10 Questions & Answers] dpeterson:
My Verizon HTC 10 tale of woe, after 3 weeks of awesomeness.

Got a new HTC 10 on August 3. I get an SD card, format it as internal storage and it worked fine until ...

Monday, August 22: I noticed that the soft buttons on either side of the fingerprint scanner weren't responding to touches. Decided to reboot the phone, thinking something was stuck in either the software or hardware, and a reboot usually fixes these types of things. However...

The phone went into a reboot loop: for several seconds it displayed a white background with a green HTC in the middle and the text "Powered by Android" at the bottom (called the 'white HTC screen' from now on), then went black for several seconds. Then the cycle repeats, and repeats, and repeats.

Did some looking around online and found a couple of potential useful button combinations: power/vol_down gets into recovery mode (except for me it displays a black background with a grayscale HTC logo in the middle (called the 'black HTC screen' from now on), followed by a black screen, displaying each for about a second or so (a faster cycle than the white HTC screen loop above.)

Also, the power/vol_down/vol_up combination gets into the bootloader menu, but not reliably. Sometimes the phone shows the bootloader menu (choices are Reboot/Reboot to bootloader/Download mode/Recovery mode/Powerdown)for a fraction of a second, then goes to the black screen and starts another reboot loop. It usually takes 2 to 4 attempts before I can stay in the bootloader menu.

Both the Recovery and Download menu options show the black HTC screen for several seconds, followed by the white HTC screen reboot loop. No useful options or other text at all. Reboot to bootloader reboots to the bootloader menu, reliably. Reboot goes directly to the white HTC screen reboot loop, and Powerdown powers down the phone.

If the phone is powered off (by the method above) and then plugged in to the charger, it displays a rectangle with a lighning bolt inside it (powered-off-and-charging display) for a few seconds, then the screen goes black and we go into the white HTC screen reboot loop.

Called Verizon support, explained the above to them, they send me a new phone which will arrive in 2 days. It does.

Wednesday, August 24: New phone arrives. I put my sim and SD cards in it, power it on, set it up, and start downloading apps. After I have a number of apps installed I take a break from that and format the SD card as internal storage. While this is going on (or maybe after it completed), the phone stops responding to the two soft buttons like the last phone did. This time, the phone rebooted itself after I fiddled with it for a little while, and it ended back up in the white HTC screen reboot loop. Argh!

Called Verizon support, fiddled around with the phone some more, and they said they would overnight me another replacement phone (waived overnight surcharge).

Thursday, August 25: I ship phones #1 and #2 back. Phone #3 did not arrive. I call Verizon, it turns out that the overnight order was never approved. It gets approved, I request Saturday delivery (it was too late to go out Thursday as the warehouse had closed).

Friday, August 26: I get a tracking number out of Verizon's system, check the Fedex tracking information and it's listed as Overnight, weekday delivery. I call Verizon again, they admit the screwup and send me another phone (#4) overnight, Saturday delivery (it's early in the day so there should be no problem getting the phone to Fedex in time for an overnight delivery.)

I check Verizon's system, get the new tracking number, check Fedex. Phone #4 is marked as second-day air, delivery on Tuesday. I call Verizon back, they can't change anything with Fedex after pickup. Looks like I'm getting 2 phones, one on Monday and the other on Tuesday. I get a bill credit for the time I am without a phone and all shipping charges are waived.

Monday, August 29: Phone #3 arrives. Put the SIM in but not the SD card, it's DOA with the white HTC reboot loop out of the box. I call Verizon, nothing useful. I get a new SIM card from the local Verizon store on the off chance that the problem is a bad SIM card. I have another phone coming tomorrow.

Wednesday, August 31: Phone #4 arrives, didn't have time to do anything with it until today. The phone comes up (with the new SIM), I start installing apps, and I then get a 'Firmware update available, download?' popup. I say yes, and then agree to the reboot when prompted. The display shows the 'unpacking' dialog, percent-complete goes up to 100%, then the phone reboots. White HTC screen reboot loop.

Call Verizon, this time they put me through to HTC support. They have me download something called 'HTC Sync Manager' (HSM from now on). While fiddling with HSM and the phone I somehow get it to boot successfully (but have never repeated this feat), it came up with the pre-firmware-upgrade version but the need-a-fingerprint-to-unlock configuration (and maybe other settings) has been lost. Looks like the phone isn't physically damaged at all, but something is messing up the bootloader. The HTC rep tries to get me to send the phone to HTC (with a 10-or-so day turnaround), I say no as Verizon is sending me phones with about 2-day delivery. I then retry the firmware download, get back in the white HTC screen reboot loop and never succeed in getting the phone to boot to Android again.

From my searching around on the Internet, it looks like HTC came out with an update on 8/15, maybe Verizon's OTA pushing of this update is causing the problem? No way to confirm, but it would explain why my phone was fine for 3 weeks, then kablooie across multiple phones.

The Verizon rep suggested taking the phone to the local Verizon store, maybe they can flash the phone with new firmware using tools not available to us mere mortals. Try it, no they can't do that.

Thursday, September 1: I ship phone #3 back. Order a Samsung S4 from Amazon so I'll have a working phone. 2-day delivery with Amazon Prime, and USPS delivers on Saturday. I need to take a break from spending my evenings on the phone with Verizon.

Saturday, September 3: The S4 arrives. It needs a different sized SIM card, but the local Verizon store has closed already. Call Verizon to try to see if they can do anything on the 'firmware update went bad' tack, maybe with a way to initiate a firmware download from the bootloader menu. No luck, but there's a new firmware update dated 08/31 that should fix the problem. He overnights me another phone (#5), estimated arrival is Wednesday due to Labor Day, and gives me a callback number so he can help me with downloading the firmware from the computer after getting the phone to its homescreen doing as little setup as possible.

Sunday, September 4: Go to a wedding. Make it to the Verizon store (in suit&tie) 1/2 hour before they close. They need the phone in order to activate the SIM. Drive home, get phone, drive back, get a working SIM. After 13 days, I have a working phone again.

TO BE CONTINUED....