It’s official, HTC has taken the wrap off their flagship smartphone of the year, the HTC U11. The smartphone as rumored comes with some exciting new features and a brand new powerful chipset, whereas the phone’s design resembles the previously launched HTC U Ultra.
Talking about the most coveted feature, the successor to last year’s HTC 10 comes with a new Edge Sense technology, which lets you initiate a specific action of your choice through an edge squeeze. To make you clear, for example, you can squeeze or touch the U11’s frame to click a photo or press harder to launch a specific app.
The phone also comes with a ‘Sense Companion’ app which will provide you some suggestions based on how you use the phone throughout your daily life. Alongside the Sense Companion app, the phone also comes with Google Assistant app out of the box, while Amazon Alexa is also touted to be baked inside the phone for certain markets — nonetheless, a plenty of choice for smart assistant lovers.
Although various rumors were suggesting the phone to hit the market with 360-real life recording camera, the reality turned out to be different. The HTC U11 comes with a 3D audio recording capability, thanks to the 4 microphones implemented on the phone. The handset is also Hi-Res audio certified and boasts BoomSound Hi-Fi Edition, much like its predecessor — meaning — the earpiece acts as a first speaker dubbed as twitter, while the bottom one tends to provide bass.
Talking about the hardware, the phone is powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 835 chipset paired up with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard storage, which can be further expanded via a microSD card slot. It has also been cleared that some of the international markets will get to enjoy the 6GB/128GB variant of the phone.
The phone sports a 5.5-inch QHD Super LCD display protected with a layer of Gorilla Glass 5. Whereas optics wise, the phone comes with a 12MP Ultra-pixel 3 primary camera at the back with 1.4-micron pixel size, f/1.7 aperture, OIS, and dual-LED flash capable of recording 4K videos. The company has claimed that the new flagship bears a DXO Mark score of 90, probably the highest ranked phone camera, period. As for selfies, the phone, surprisingly, comes with a 16MP unit at the front. The front camera can record capture wide-angle selfies and videos at 1080p.
The glossy body phone is thankfully IP67 certified, meaning the U11 is water and dust resistant to some extent. The whole phone boots on Android 7.1 Nougat and packs a 3000mAh battery with Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 support. Connectivity option of the phone includes 4G LTE support, Bluetooth 4.2, dual-band WiFi, NFC, GPS, GLONASS, and USB Type-C port for data exchanging.
The HTC U11 will arrive in five different colors, including Saphire Blue, Amazing Silver, Ice White, Brilliant Black, and Solar Red. The phone will go on sale for $749 from this May worldwide, while interested users can pre-order the handset from today.
So, what do you think about the new flagship from HTC? Is it worth the price? Will you get one for yourself or opt in for other solid alternatives like the Galaxy S8/S8+ from Samsung? Let us know your thoughts in the comment box below.
HTC U11 Specs Highlight
- Display: 5.5″ Super LCD5 with 1,440 x 2,560px resolution and Gorilla Glass 5.
- Chipset: 2.45GHz Snapdragon 835 running Android 7.1 Nougat with HTC Sense and Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa (where supported).
- Camera: 12MP UltraPixel 3, UltraSpeed Autofocus, f/1.7, OIS, DualLED flash, RAW capture / 16MP with Live Make-up; 1080p video recording
- Memory: 4GB RAM (64GB version) and 6GB RAM (128GB version), microSD slot.
- Connectivity: 1Gbps LTE, VoLTE, Wi-Fi calling, Optional DualSIm model, USB-C port with USB 3.1 and DisplayPort support, no 3.5mm audio jack, Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, NFC, GPS, GLONASSS, Beidou support.
- Battery: 3,000mAh, QuickCharge 3.0.
- Sensors: Edge squeeze sensor, fingerprint sensor.
