HTC U11
THE TAIWANESE FAN-FAVOURITE PHONE MAKER’S LATEST TRIES SOMETHING DIFFERENT, BUT IS IT ENOUGH TO TAKE ON APPLE AND SAMSUNG?
A LOT OF attention has been given to one particular feature of HTC’s latest flagship: its ‘squeezability’. Combined with a glitzy enclosure that’s available in a brighter range of colours than we’re used to, you’ve got a fairly striking handset, but still one that, beneath its gimmicks, is ready to challenge the top dogs.
The U11 has a feature dubbed ‘Edge Sense’, which effectively allows you to squeeze the lower portion of the phone in order to trigger a user-defined action, such as taking a screenshot or photo, turning on the flashlight or opening an app. While you can fine-tune the amount of pressure needed to activate this feature and assign different actions for short or long squeezes, it never quite feels natural and comes across as a needlessly convoluted variant of a regular physical button. In testing, we found we’d often activate Edge Sense accidentally, and the act of squeezing to take a photo (the default action) makes for an unsteady camera hand and blurry photos. The squeeze feature, then, is pretty much pure novelty.
The aesthetic of the U11 is unique to such a degree that it’s likely to be divisive. HTC has moved away from the sleek, simple edges and matte finishes of its previous flagship phones towards overt glamour. Most notably, the rear of the phone is made from rounded glass with an iridescent coat of flashy colour beneath it, creating a two-tone effect that’s more striking in some colours than others — the Solar Red, which phases into gold, is quite magnificent. However, having both sides of the phone constructed from glass means fingerprints appear very quickly, and once you put the phone in a case, the charm gets hidden behind scruffy clear plastic. Sans-case, the U11 has practically no hard edges or corners, and this rounded design goes a long way to making the phone feel cohesive and premium.
From our benchmarks, the U11 seems to be performing in the same ballpark as Samsung’s latest Galaxy S8 in both GPU- and CPUintensive workouts, which is an impressive feat. This is likely courtesy of the latest Snapdragon 835 processor at its heart, making usage both snappy and hitch-free in daily operation. Both the 1440p display and camera perform well and are as stunning as the near-$1,000 price bracket would suggest, and while the U11 still has a 3,000 mAh battery to power it (the same size as the HTC 10), results from our benchmarks indicate that its longevity doesn’t suffer as a result, lasting around 10 hours 45 minutes in PCMark 8’s tough Work test.
The included USonic earphones (now with active noise cancelling) offer a calibration-based sound profile that is customised to your ear cavities. This works incredibly well and, in our opinion, makes for the best pair of included headphones available with any smartphone, although HTC has sacrificed the 3.5mm headphone jack on the U11, which is a shame. Instead of the two front-facing speakers from certain previous HTC flagships, there’s a speaker on the bottom and rear of the phone that enhance the separation of some frequencies, although we found this wasn’t as impressive as the old design.
We fear that the gimmicky squeeze and hitor-miss aesthetic instantly dates this handset and likely introduces unnecessary costs. Despite this, the U11 is still an excellent option for audio-lovers and power-users alike.