As fans of HTC products and the different operating systems that they use, it’s sometimes hard to get a good read on how satisfied out readers are with their phones. Yes, we all know that there are gripes about getting the latest version of Android on our phones, but does that keep you from enjoying your handset on a day-to –day basis? Fortunately, companies like ChangeWave have enough money to go out and talk to handset owners from across the country to get a feel for customer satisfaction. Their most recent survey covered 1009 smartphone users in the U.S. and Canada. HTC came in strong at third place, with only Apple and Motorola finishing with better scores. Overall, 51 percent of HTC customers were very satisfied with their handsets. Digging a little further, ChangeWave found that the Sprint HTC Hero scored the highest for HTC with 68% of customers giving it a rating of “very satisfied” compared to 50% for the HTC DROID Eris and 38% for the HTC Touch.

Seeing these numbers we were a bit surprised to see such a huge gap between Hero and DROID Eris owners considering that they are essentially the same handset. Honestly, having used both handsets extensively, I would give the DROID Eris a higher satisfaction rating over the Hero due to build quality and a smoother ROM. I would also like to know why in the world the HTC Touch was included in the survey. The Windows Mobile powered HTC Touch is three years old and should have been retired to everyone’s bottom desk drawer some time ago. I’m sure most of us would give a 38% “very satisfied” rating to the Nexus One after three years of use.

On a positive note for Android, 67% of customers said that they were very satisfied with Google’s OS. Android didn’t grab the number one spot in the ratings, but it was only trailing by 4 percentage points behind the iPhone OS’ 71% satisfaction rating.

ChangeWave is planning on doing a follow-up survey sometime soon so that they include the new owners of the HTC DROID Incredible. We’re hoping they wait long enough to include those who plan on picking up the HTC EVO 4G and myTouch 3G Slide once they launch next week.

So our question for you is: how satisfied are you with your HTC smartphone?

Source: Changewave Research