My HTC Desire HD Gripe – Network Operators Screen
I love my HTC Desire HD, you already know that.
Everything about HTC’s Sense UI for their Android phones is superb and extremely well thought through to deliver a fantastic user experience on what is, for me (a seasoned techie and13-year smartphone enthusiast), the best phone available today.
But there’s just one thing that disappoints me, and only one. The nag screen I get when my phone is out of service. I’ve sent tweets to HTC about this, all of which have been ignored. I’ve submitted a comment somewhere on their site about it. Ignored.
I’ve searched forums and blogs for a fix but it seems nobody else is bothered by it. In five months of searching this is the only other complaint I found about it. Can it only be happening to me? And that dude?
Can it just be because, after 13 years with the supreme O2, I moved to awful Orange (now merged with even worse T-Mobile to create their incredibly lacklustre Everything Everywhere Nothing Nowhere network)?
I still bear a grudge towards O2 for not carrying the Desire HD, allowing themselves instead to be coerced by Microsoft into carry the ridiculously stupid Windows 7 version of the HTC – and thereby causing my flight.
So what’s this big problem with the Desire HD?
Well actually, I’m not altogether sure whether it’s a HTC fault or Android fault as I haven’t tested it on Android phones by other manufacturers. But I suspect it to be HTC. And I can’t be sure whether it’s specific to the Desire HD or if it happens to other handsets too.
If anybody else experiences this please tell us in the comments. If you know of a fix, tell me how many children I have to sacrifice for you to tell me.
HTC Desire HD Network Operators Nag Screen
When the HTC Desire HD is out of signal range, an annoying black window hijacks my screen, interrupting whatever I’m doing. It shows the available mobile networks in range, offering me an opportunity to select one (including those I’m restricted from joining).
Sometimes, it resets my position in text I’m composing, other times it kicks me out of apps altogether.
In my five minute video below it happens six times (at 0:45, 1:38, 2:30, 3:20, 4:14 and 5:05). Fortunately this is only (roughly) every 50 seconds so it’s not a brilliant example, but when I’m in a poor service area it usually happens every 25 – 30 seconds, sometimes every 15 seconds.
It’s highly frustrating when you’re on the Tube/Metro/Subway or anywhere else you regularly have no signal but want to maximise efficiency by composing several emails, a blog post, or just work offline.
HTC need to remove this infuriating ‘feature’. When I’m out of service an ‘X’ appears next to the signal strength indicator. If I pull down the task bar, I get the option there to join an available network. That’s intuitive and indicative enough.
Somebody at HTC please see this and build it into your next Sense UI update for Android phones that are affected.
About Uche Chukwu | All Posts | Website | Twitter | Contact
An opinionated, social commentator and cultural critic with something to say about everything. Usually polemic and not always well thought through. Something of an insensitive, hypocritical contradiction of altruistic folly, he observes what is wrong with society, snears at, examines and dissects it then walks away in disgust, offering little by way of solution. Believes the world needn't actually change, and dumbing down is unnecessary, we just need to find a way to eradicate the really stupid. He's part of the problem.
This problem is very annoying. I’m switching phone brand and got the new micro sim for the Galaxy S3, and the HTC Desire is now disabled (wi-fi works).
Settings -> wireless & networks -> Network Operators
Try “search for networks” (manual) and receive “error no network found”. Check if your “always data-on” is disabled too (might be this option alone and not needed anyway)
This stopped the annoying popup for me. I figure the phone stopped broadcasting to network towers after the manual search attempt failed.
I work at sea so whenever you get near the coast or go near the coast for long periods of time this pops up ALL THE TIME. It pops up in front of whatever I’m doing. I’m playing a game or writing an email this thing pops right on up on top of it. Setting it to automatically choosing a network will fix this but I don’t want it to choose automatically. I only want it to use my home network (not talking about 3g just the phone service so nothing to do with data roaming). I have an HTC Legend so certainly not only desire. If I let it choose network automatically when you’re overseas and someone leaves you a voicemail you have to pay stupid amounts of money even if you don’t listen to it which is why I don’t want it to choose automatically. I think the only fix for this is changing to something that isn’t HTC sense. Oh and I don’t want airplane mode as I still want it to choose my home network as fast as possible when it’s in range.
This happens to me when im in a foreign country. I have roaming disabled, but as there are networks available the screen constantly pops up. V annoying, would love a fix
Get the exact same thing on my Desire.
Your supposed to be able to use T-Mobiles network when the Orange one isn’t available – So many times I get “your sim card does not allow connection to this network”
Orange/T-Mobile are useless!!
I have the standard Desire, not the HD. It occasionally offers me the chance to update my time zone when I’m on the tube or otherwise without signal…but it doesn’t do it via a full page notification, thankfully.
…I would so love to concur, alas THIS problem has never (yet) happened to me.
I won’t elaborate on what my problems are cause I love this phone.
Strange – I’ve never had that screen pop up when my Desire HD can’t get a signal….