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HTC's 'Uh Oh' program will replace your busted One M9 once for free

HTC's two-toned M9 hasn't landed in the US yet, but the company's already champing at the bit to give you more reasons to buy one. Just as earlier reports suggested, HTC is fleshing out its Advantage program with a little something called "Uh Oh Protection," and it's a little more impressive than that tongue-in-cheek name implies. Long story short, if you crack the phone's Gorilla Glass-swathed screen, take it for a swim in the Pacific or pledge allegiance to another carrier within your first year of ownership, HTC will overnight you precisely one replacement unit totally gratis. On the off-chance that your M9 survives that first year without incident, you'll get $100 to apply toward the purchase of a new One down the road.

Actually, let's just double back and highlight the biggest takeaway again: You get one free replacement. You do not have carte blanche to treat your phone like a jerk and expect someone to take care of it over and over. That said, folks who batter their phones early on will probably wind up with brand new One M9s for their trouble while future butterfingers will more than likely get refurbished units. Oh, and in case you were concerned, you will indeed get the same memory and color configuration back in the mail -- you won't get saddled with gunmetal after destroying your gold-and-silver obelisk. No matter how you slice it, this is a pretty dramatic improvement over the HTC Advantage we once knew. Remember, that program only replaced a busted screen within six months from the date of purchase, and even that seemed plenty generous at the time. In a year where a recovering HTC faces even stiffer competition from Samsung and its pair of smartly tweaked flagships, the thoughtfulness of a program like Uh Oh just might make all the difference to customers (and those all important financial results).