HTC One experiences serious issues with capacitive hardware buttons

Editor’s note: The following guest post was written by Pocketables reader m03sizlak about his experience so far with the HTC One on Sprint. If you’ve got the HTC One, and would like to throw in your two cents, please leave a comment. Or, better yet, get in touch with us if you’re interested in submitting a guest post of your own!

If you are having problems with the capacitive Home and Back buttons on your HTC One, you are not alone.  According to numerous reports at XDA and elsewhere, the symptoms manifest themselves as sporadic and inconsistent detection of button-presses, and it seems as if many One owners are plagued by this issue.

It is unclear if this is due to the buttons not being sensitive enough, or if there is some other underlying issue. It also seems as if screen protectors may make the problem worse, with some users reporting that the buttons will not work at all when used with a screen protector.

I can tell you that my One has been stricken with this problem since day one, and it has all but ruined the entire new-phone experience for me.  What should have been a pleasurable time of exploring the capabilities of this otherwise incredible piece of hardware, I have instead been left annoyed and disgruntled.  Thinking I had a defective unit, I brought it to my local Sprint store only to be told that this was a “known issue.” Indeed, the store demo unit had the same problem, as did a few other demo units I found.

However, there is hope, as a new software update that is currently rolling out by HTC may address this problem. So far, the OTA updated has only been rolled out to unbranded handsets in Europe and Asia, but an HTC rep has confirmed to me that the update will be rolling out across the US as soon as the various carriers can push it out. It was also confirmed that it does in fact address the button issue.

This update will be labeled 1.29.xxx.12 (where the xxx is your region code), and it also contains significant camera improvements, as well as various other fixes and enhancements.  I don’t know about you, but I can not get this update soon enough.

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