There’s new evidence that the HTC One may actually launch on all four major U.S. service providers. T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T have already announced their intent to sell the HTC One (according to HTC, the March retail launch of the device is still on track), but Verizon has not shown any sign that it will offer the device to its customers. But that may soon change.
According to a new rumor, Verizon is currently testing the HTC One and its retail debut “will trail the other U.S. carriers by a month or two.” This new bit of information comes only a day after we reported that the Verizon-bound HTC6445LVW (also known as the HTC DLXPLUS) received its Bluetooth certification. It’s impossible to know why Verizon would want to keep the HTC One out of the hands of its customers for an extra month or two, but we wouldn’t be surprised if the device features a handful of hardware and software tweaks once it hits store shelves later this spring.
Source: All Things D
It is not “impossible” to figure out why they would launch it months later. The Droid DNA is on Verizon and contains some of the same characteristics making the HTC One a tiny upgrade form the DNA. Verizon is making a smart business move to not allow product saturation within it’s carrier by offering this later to steal some of the thunder away from Droid DNA users and hype up this phone as a newer more advanced phone with a good amount of spacing in between the DNA and Verizon-Version of the One’s release times. Verizon over the course of the past couple years is putting more emphasis on business anyway. The statement that they will ‘test’ it over their network is bogus. Verizon uses some of the same frequencies s for most of it’s communicable wavelengths that other carriers do and they (all other carriers) have signed up unanimously. The reason that the other carriers signed up immediately is because they do not currently offer HTC manufactured phones of that quality whereas the DNA is a more basic version and resides on Big Red. In the end it is all business.
That may be an educated assumption, but you do not have any evidence to prove it. HTC Source suggested the same reason for the Verizon HTC One delay nearly a month ago, so don’t act like your idea was original.
Regarding your statement about Verizon not needing to test the phone… are you serious? All U.S. carriers test phones. It’s what they do. The reason for this is mainly due to custom software builds which include carrier specific applications, but devices are also custom tuned to refine reception on CDMA, GSM and LTE networks. Carriers typically start testing phones 2-3 months before they are launched since they want to guarantee that the device is not a dud. The last thing a carrier wants is a horde of consumers returning phones right after a device is launched.
maybe Verizon wants flocks of customers to switch carriers, so there will be room for newbs to buy crappy phones.