All it takes is an accidental nudge off the end of a table, and bam: The screen of your expensive smartphone is smashed to smithereens. HTC wants to ease that pain by offering free screen replacements on its phones — with a few caveats.
HTC announced its Advantage program on Tuesday, in which the smartphone maker will replace broken screens on its flagship One phones for free within the first six months that an American customer owns the phone.
But don't go carelessly tossing around your One: HTC's offer is good for just one replacement, and only customers who buy a One, One Mini or One Max from Tuesday onward are eligible.
The announcement comes a few weeks before HTC is expected to unveil a brand new flagship phone. Also on Tuesday, HTC sent members of the press invitations to events in New York City and London on March 25.
The event comes one year after HTC released the One, which received high marks from reviewers -- but sales have reportedly disappointed. One of HTC's main rivals, Samsung, is planning a big presentation at the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona later this month.
The Advantage program is a way for HTC to sweeten the deal for customers, and it includes a few other perks beyond the screen replacement: 25 to 50 gigabytes of free additional cloud storage on Google Drive (the amount depends on the device purchased) and a commitment from HTC to keep One devices updated with the "major" updates to Google's Android operating system within two years of the phone's launch.
"Our mission is to reward those that buy the very best by treating them as well on day 500 as the day they walk out of the store," HTC said on the Advantage website.