Bjorn Lilburn, Vice President of Design at HTC told the crowd at the Frequencies event in Seattle that research conducted by the company last year indicated that HTC’s customers care more about thinner phones than they do devices with better battery life. He went on to say that once HTC learned that their customers “generally” preferred a thinner phone to better battery life, HTC scrapped plans for 3000 mAh batteries in their phones.
There’s really only one possible reaction to this statement: BULLSHIT!
It’s true, customers aren’t buying HTC devices like they used to. HTC sales in Q1 were off 70% year over year, but the company has hopes that a focus on the One series of devices will help right the ship. Well, the one series paired with awful battery life. But to claim that customers care more about thin devices than battery life in the Samsung Galaxy Note era is laughable. I’ve seen people shove the Galaxy Note in their pocket. I’ve watched as people have held that large 5.3″, anything but thin device up to their ear to make a phone call. I’ve seen bigger, thicker, heavier devices offered by Samsung and they seem to be selling pretty well.
With the HTC Thunderbolt, I got neither a thin device nor even acceptable battery life. I got a larger, thick and heavy device that saw less than two full hours of use on 4G. HTC is telling me, a guy with an extended battery that makes my Thunderbolt look like it’s got a great big tumor on it’s back that battery life doesn’t matter is laughable.
I am very interested in what the HTC One series of devices will do when they are broadly available in the USA. The reviews that I’ve read seem positive, but I’m more interested in what end users that buy the device have to say about battery life than anything that comes from a blog review. HTC had better hope that they can manage thin and battery life at the same time or a 70% year-over-year drop will become standard HTC performance.
Source: The Verge