HTC is giving a finger to its customers

I already reported about presumably lack of drivers in newer HTC devices. At the time it was all speculation. Now we have an official response from HTC. They are basically saying:

Yes, we advertise the devices as great, the devices have actually great hardware but we don’t include proper drivers because it would take time and effort from us. Thus the devices perform worse than years older devices but it is still good for you. We won’t provide drivers for actual devices, no, that would take time and effort from us. Instead, since you demand it, we will sell you future devices with such drivers, if you really want it. Maybe.

Now, let’s play a couple of analogies. Let’s say you bought 64 of the newest top notch graphic card, that features a zillion of pipelines and 64 way SLI. You plug them into your mobo that supports 64 SLI graphic cards and try playing Duke Nuke’m 4 only to find out that graphics perform same as with a single 4 year old graphic card. The reason being drives not included. Nor they are available at all. What? You did assume drivers were there?

Let’s see a car analogy. You buy a great car, that includes a turbo charger. Yet, the acceleration and top speed are low. The reason being turbo charger is not working because is not connected. And you can’t connect it since nobody is selling connection cables. What? You did assume turbo charger will work?

Now, let me state this clear, as there is some misunderstanding in the air. It is not just about video playback speed and quality. The entire UI is slow. Try running Windows in safe mode with VGA mode enabled and you’ll get the point. This lousy UI performance casts a very dark shadow to [MS] Windows Mobile, too – many says that the slowness is because Windows Mobile sucks. Perhaps, but the core reason is the lack of hardware acceleration. No wonder that iPhone had such a success. In this case Apple did an integral product, not just created good hardware and throw it to the customers. No, they actually provide proper software, too. (I am still in favor of Windows Mobile devices though for other reasons, such as programmability). Looks like the Windows Mobile device manufacturers lack of common sense when comes to usability.

So, what does the biggest Windows Mobile device manufacturer do when its customers point out that it is selling an underperfoming device just because lack of proper drivers. Will they rectify the problem and provide proper drivers? Will they provide proper drivers for a small fee? No, HTC shows a proverbial finger at its loyal customers (HTC is also mentioning how much they value their customers in every press release). I only hope that this attitude will backfire on them.

The biggest mystery of this story is, why isn’t HTC including these drivers by default. I mean what company wouldn’t like to have best performing devices out there? I presume that there are two basic reasons:

1. They are plain stupid (they don’t see why those would be required, even now, with iPhone UI performance out there)
2. They are cheap. Which is stupid again. Because they won’t spend money on better software they’ll loose additional customers. But if they did spend it would be certainly an overall profit for them.

I really can’t think of other reasons.

So, it is not just about the lack of drivers, what really is sad, is the response and attitude from HTC.

But hey, let’s give the finger back – I won’t buy a HTC device again and I am sure that many others won’t as well.