why i will never buy another HTC phone

i've been a big fan of android since almost the beginning. my first smartphone was an HTC G1, and my second was an HTC G2.

the G1 was basically obsolete 2 months after I'd gotten it. big, clunky, poor battery life, and in just a couple of months, the battery swelled mysteriously and caused random power outages on the phone. i solved this with a simple $3 aftermarket battery, but i had to figure all this out myself since the outages were random and could not be reproduced in the tmob store.

the G2 had nicer finish, but was, oddly, more heavy than the G1. still, it had all the features I liked on the G1, plus it could run the newer OS versions.

except that HTC had decided that they knew better than google, and wrote their own bluetooth stack for the phone. that bluetooth stack works only 50% of the time with my car. 2 of my old moto dumbphones worked just fine with my car, as did the G1. but HTC deviated from the spec, or didn't test their code, or whatever they did, and after several OTA updates, my G2 does not work reliably with my car.

then i started getting random shutdowns of the G2. the battery was not obviously expanded/bowed like it was on the G1. lots of research led me to a clue: the idiotically placed metal strips on the G2 battery touch metal in the battery housing, and short out. sure enough, my battery had the metal strips (not all do). i stuck a piece of paper in there to cover the metal strips, and since then, no power outages.

HTC's ridiculously bad quality control has brought me too much grief. the G2 is my last HTC phone and I recommend against anyone getting an HTC phone in the future.