An HTC phone starts out somewhere between four months and a year before reaching to the ABS block mockup stage. During this time engineers figure out the next best way to put the phone together, as well as finding the best weight and the best components for certain models, so that the actual size of them feel good in our hands. In the US, HTC talks to carriers to find out what technologies (such as chipsets, displays and radios) they want to enable, as well as learning what size, appearance, feeling and functions their customers are asking for. HTC has even conducted smartphone deprivation studies to see what features the participants missed the most: phones were taken away for two weeks, and during the period people had to document what they missed about their smartphones, as well as noting whether they had found other ways to do what they'd normally do with their phones.
