The HTC One series of phones are all around good phones. The camera might be weaker than some other flagships out right now such as the LG G4 and the Samsung Galaxy S6, but most users love the build quality and their Sense UI. The one problem with the HTC One series is that it’s made by HTC a company that has been giving off a lot of confusing signals since its new HTC One M9 flagship phone was released. Their most recent peculiar choice is the decision to send ads to its phones via push notifications. In June, the Taiwanese company sent out a press release stating that they would soon start sending out ads through its BlinkFeed.
BlinkFeed is basically a place where social media and news feeds merge on HTC’s Sense UI like My Magazine in Samsung’s Touchwiz. In its press release HTC had this to say “If you’re a BlinkFeed user located in one of the markets named above, you’ll begin to see a limited number of native, relevant promotions of sponsored apps from AdNetworks partners such as Yahoo, Twitter, and Appia, as well as HTC auto promotions for new accessories or devices. Because these are native ads, they will appear like a typical BlinkFeed post rather than as a pop-up or banner ad. We will be implementing a way for you to opt out of receiving these promotions, but we hope that displaying native and limited promotions in this way will help you discover new and useful apps and/or products and services.”
Well, HTC One’s M7, M8 and M9 users on T-Mobile and Verizon are seeing ads for the upcoming movie Fantastic Four. These ads are coming not on their BlinkFeeds but from push notifications, something HTC forgot to mention in its initial statement this past June. For those wanting to know if they can turn this feature off, many users have found that if you go to settings then sound notifications you will find a way to stop this new feature from coming through. By the early response from its users, this is turning out be another misstep by HTC in what is starting to look like a very down year.