Uh-Oh: HTC’s new warranty program offers some serious benefits (US only)

HTC is extending its Advantage warranty program with new benefits and a longer validity period. The new program is called Uh-Oh, and while the name is funny, the benefits it offers are nothing to laugh at.

Customers who sign up for Uh-Oh will receive a free one-time replacement if their One M9 or One M8 suffers a broken screen or any water damage. The coverage lasts for 12 months from the purchase of a device, and all users are automatically signed up upon purchasing a device. Like Advantage before it, the Uh-Oh program will be available in the United States only. It’s not clear yet if other devices besides the M9 and M8 will be included, but we know for sure that Desire series phones are not covered.

Compared to last year’s Advantage, the new Uh-Oh doubles the coverage time and extends it to water damage, one of the most common ways to ruin a smartphone. Even if you don’t damage your phone, there are some benefits – HTC will give you a new device if you switch carriers (you have to give back the old one), and, if you don’t use any of these replacements, you will get $100 credit to use against a future HTC One purchase.

For more details, HTC will be holding a live customer Q&A session with US president Jason Mackenzie from 12PM ET/9AM PT. Watch the live stream here. Mackenzie is pretty confident that Uh-Oh will help differentiate the M9: “Our competitors look at cracked screens and broken phones as a way to milk more money from [their] customers,” he said. “We see it as a way to change the game, and give customers a premium experience with a premium product. We think the Uh Oh Program is something that will tip people over the edge.”

Uh-Oh looks like a nice little bonus for One M9 buyers, especially if you’re a butterfingers like me (and you don’t like bulky cases.) Too bad it’s US-only at this point.

Is this warranty program something that would sway you towards picking up the M9 when it becomes available later this month?

HTC will stream its big “Uh-Oh” announcement Wednesday at 9am PT

HTC is counting down the hours until it’s big “Uh-Oh” announcement, which will begin on Wednesday, March 18th at 9am PT (11am CT). As of right now, we’re not quite sure what the term “Uh-Oh” means in this case. HTC has posted the countdown video on its site, and you can find it by heading to HTC.com/us/uh-oh.

The HTC event that’s happening tomorrow was alluded to by the company’s own Jason Mackenzie just yesterday. On Twitter, he said:

HTC has a BIG announcement for US customers on Wednesday. #HTCOneM9

While Mackenzie didn’t specify what details will be outed in the announcement, we have a feeling that it has to do with the One M9‘s U.S. availability. Multiple carriers in the United States have announced that they’ll eventually carry the One M9 sometime in “early Spring”, though we haven’t heard any information beyond that.

Last year when HTC announced the One M8, the company made it available exclusively on Verizon that same day. Needless to say, that got customers pretty excited, so we wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what we hear tomorrow. For now that’s just speculation, so we’ll need to wait for official word from HTC during the “Uh-Oh” event. If you’d like to watch the event, you can check out the YouTube video below. If not, Android Authority will surely keep you updated as HTC announces more details.

If the HTC One M9 becomes available tomorrow, will you pick one up?

You may want to take that HTC One M9 overheating report with a big grain of salt

According to a report that surfaced earlier today from Dutch website Tweakers, the HTC One M9 running the popular benchmarking app GFXBench suffers from significant overheating issues. The website measured the One M9 along with various other high-end devices through a thermal camera, and reported each of the device’s temperatures. The One M9 became significantly hotter than all the other handsets, reaching up to extreme temperatures of 55.4 degrees Celsius, or just over 131 degrees Fahrenheit. In the image provided, no other handset even comes close to the One M9’s numbers. Take a look at the image below for more information.

The report states that these high temperatures were reached only when running the benchmark app. When playing games like Asphalt 8 and Assassin’s Creed: Pirates, the temperature stayed around 42.5 degrees Celsius.

The reasoning behind this overheating issue? Most notably, the One M9 is running on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 processor, which hasn’t exactly gotten the best track record for its performance since its release. Samsung ultimately decided to pass on the processor with the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge handsets, possibly due to overheating issues that the processor has been rumored to have.

Comparatively, a few reports have also stated that the Snapdragon 810 doesn’t cause any overheating issues whatsoever. Anandtech tested the chip, and essentially said there were no overheating issues to be found. Now, of course the processor will run differently when its performing in different handsets, so the claims against overheating issues in this instance with the One M9 don’t really stand up.

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves on the processor overheating issues, there are a few other variables that come in to play. For starters, the HTC One M9 hasn’t been released yet. The handset in the test was not running even close to final software, which likely plays a big part in its overheating troubles. HTC recently delayed the launch of the One M9 in Taiwan to make some last minute software adjustments. While there’s no information on the software fixes it’s receiving, HTC is obviously still working on the handset to ensure the device’s stability.

The last thing we need to think about is the feasibility of this data. A metal device reaching temperatures of over 131 degrees could be dangerous to the human skin, and would likely be unbearable to hold for an extended period of time. By no means am I saying that the benchmark scores are inaccurate or that the temperature is wrong. But what I am saying is that HTC probably wouldn’t release a handset that overheats this much. They’ve been testing this device for months with the exact same chipset, and have presumably made adjustments where they see fit. Especially given the company’s financial standpoint in the mobile division, you’d think HTC wouldn’t overlook an issue this major.

The device we get in our hands in a few weeks will undoubtably be different from the device Tweakers is using in their report. And although the website’s findings coincide with just about everything we’ve been hearing about the Snapdragon 810, we need to withhold our judgement until we actually get our hands on the consumer-ready devices.