[HTC U12+ Guides, News, & Discussion] craigspc:
Hi all,

I wanted to wait for an update before making my own public comments, so here's a summary of what things are like for me now (post update)....

- I still find the power button over sensitive, but I'm willing to accept that the accidental on/off situations are due to the button location and could be avoided with a little adjustment in use.

- In controlled conditions (ie. on the home screen, with the screen on), I can activate the volume up and down buttons with equal success and relative comfort/ease. They're slightly different to normal buttons for sure, but essentially they work perfectly. The earlier issue of having difficulty turning the volume up has been resolved. I don't know if it is worth mentioning, but the area between the volume buttons registers as a Volume+ press. I don't know if this was the case before.

- The edge sense 'squeeze' function now works as desired. I cannot comment on the double tap feature, as I find the tap sensitive area too low down the phone to use comfortably one handed. I therefore leave it disabled and wish that the functionality could be mapped to the capacitive buttons instead.

- My volume buttons have significantly improved in landscape orientation within the couple of games that I play. They also work perfectly in landscape orientation on my home screen (obviously the screen doesn't rotate, but it confirms that my grip on the phone is OK). However, this morning - the volume buttons were a total nightmare in YouTube. Usually they work OK, but this time they flatly refused to respond without a significant number of repeated attempts - often with lots more pressure. When this happened, it was like trying to do something on a PC when the CPU is at 100% load (or before the machine has booted up properly).

- Ironically, I also had a 'major' problem during a phone call this morning. It was completely impossible to adjust the volume with the phone against my ear. It just didn't work at all. I moved the phone away from my head (screen came on) and after 3-4 further attempts the buttons started working normally again.

In summary, my phone now works perfectly 90% of the time, and causes problems 10% of the time.

Being unable to adjust the volume during a phone call, and the risk of being unable to rapidly adjust the volume if something plays too loud, is a problem that bothers me a lot. While I do plan to stick it out and see what HTC do with this phone, it is the first time in a decade that I would actually discourage anyone who asks my opinion from buying a HTC flagship. I simply can't recommend something on the basis that it's an amazing phone, with buttons that work most of the time.

Craig.

Update (maybe 30 minutes after the above post):

While watching a video (again on YouTube), the Edge sense Squeeze function went into hyper-sensitivity mode (faintest pressure sending the blue lines across the screen). Volume buttons also became insensitive at the same time. Turning the screen off with the power button, then back on with the fingerprint scanner immediately fixed it and the volume buttons started working again as normal. This was after a reset, followed by a full Power-Off and Power-On that I performed after my original post.