HTC Extends HTC One Promotion to Those Who Pre-Registered

For those who had registered their interest in the flagship HTC One smartphone, HTC is extending its trade-in offer where users can send in their old but functioning smartphone and get at least a $100 rebate. If your old phone is worth more than $100, you’ll naturally earn more, but you’ll at least be guaranteed of the $100 regardless of the value of your old smartphone.

In the latest email sent out to customers who had pre-registered their interest in the HTC One, the company says that you now have until May 19 to purchase the device in the U.S. and up to June 19 to send in your old device and any requirements as part of this promotional offer.

This is the second time that HTC is extending the promotion.

One reason that HTC may be extending the promotion is because the HTC One has been an extremely popular phone that demand has been outstripping supplies. Inventories have been selling out at many locations as quickly as stores receive new shipments so even customers who pre-registered but who did not pre-order may not have had the chance to buy the HTC One yet.

The HTC One faces stiff competition from Samsung, which has recently launched its rival Galaxy S4 smartphone. Samsung also hasn’t been afraid in the past to outspend rivals in marketing.

The HTC One is one of the best made smartphones available today with a zero-gap construction process, aluminum shell, Ultrapixel camera, and sleek software that runs on the latest Snapdragon 600 processor from Qualcomm. The phone is available through AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile in the U.S. Additionally, customers who are on AT&T can also buy the developer unlocked model with 64 GB of storage direct from HTC for $650 with an unlocked edition with 32 GB of storage for $575. With the $100 promotion, customers will essentially be spending at most $550 or $475 for these two latter models and both are compatible with AT&T’s LTE network in the U.S. minus all the carrier bloatware that you’ll see on a carrier-branded edition.

This promotion will also work with carrier-branded units that you can buy with a contract and may be on top of any deals or promotions that your carrier will give you. For example, in the past, T-Mobile had offered a free car dock with an order of the HTC One.

This makes the pricing for HTC extremely competitive, especially when priced against Apple’s iPhone 5, which bears a similar zero-gap aluminum construction design and LTE connectivity.

The unlocked iPhone 5 in 32 GB capacity costs $749 and the 64 GB costs $849. The highest capacity model costs a full $200 more than the similar HTC model before HTC’s promotion and could cost at least $300 more than the HTC One after the trade-in promotion has been applied. The advantage of the iPhone is that the model will run on either T-Mobile’s or AT&T’s network unlocked whereas the unlocked HTC One will be most useful on AT&T’s network as it would likely be on 2G EDGE speeds on T-Mobile as the device lacks a compatible radio.