HTC One M8 Survival Guide

Preface

By 2026, the battery in my 2014 HTC One M8 could barely hold a charge for more than a few hours.

I also damaged the screen years ago. I vividly remember the day I tripped and sent the phone flying down the corridor. Even though it had been sitting in a bookcase, it somehow managed to land screen‑first on the one protruding edge in the entire hallway. The screen didn’t crack, but it was permanently damaged — the pixels around the impact point turned darker, as if they could no longer reach full brightness.

A battery and screen replacement was long overdue. I had also noticed the software was somewhat unreliable and went through a factory reset but still was not happy with the result. More on that later.

Hardware

Having sourced the replacement parts months ago, I finally got around to installing them — swapping the original 2600 mAh battery for a 2840 mAh HTC One M9 battery after confirming they were compatible. I replaced the screen assembly. the USB and audio jack board and lower speaker assembly. I took me most of the day to get it done. There are tones of tutorials and videos online but it goes like that:
  • Remove bottom and top plastic covers over the speakers — that will let you access the screws underneath
    • I used a sharp tweezer to lift them before switching to triangle opening picks
  • Remove the screws you just revealed
  • Unclip the back aluminium cover from the screen assembly
    • I first use the Jimmy on the top left corner then switching to triangle opening picks again
  • Carefully remove the aluminium tapes covering the flat cables
  • Unplug a bunch of cables and antennas
  • Remove a few more screws
  • Remove the motherboard
  • Remove the battery
  • Remove the daughterboard
  • Put all this back together on the new screen assembly
I cleaned up the various parts I was planning to reuse and made sure the phone powered up before clipping back on the back cover.

HTC One M8 innards


Software

Having taken my time with the hardware I thought settings up the software would be the easy part. I ended up spending a couple of days and four or five factory resets to sort it out. Turns out there is a nasty bug where after updating Google Play Services and rebooting, your phone is stuck in a reboot loop. I needed to use TWRP to clear Google Play Services data folder but I wonder if you might be able to get this done through the clear data settings option before rebooting your phone and thus avoid the reboot loop altogether. Here is what I think should be done to update your software:
The initial Google Play Services update can be tricky to trigger. I usually get a few crashes after first login with my Google account. You may need to reboot and or clear Google Play data. Sideloading APKs for HTC Sense Home and WebView is recommended as the ones you get from the Play Store are not the most up-to-date for HTC One M8 running Android 6 Marshmallow.

Resources

HTC Sense Home
Update WebView
Reboot loop
Install missing certificate authorities
 
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