HTC U11 review: A powerful Android phone that knows how to have fun - lavalleyyousiolind1979

chebert@idgcommunications.com The HTC U11 is fast and powerful, and it isn't cowardly to embrace its fun side.

At a Glance

Skilled's Rating

Pros

Fixes most of the U Extremist's problems.
Edge Sense is a amusive right smart to launch apps.
Incredibly allegro with a great camera.

Cons

Battery life is only OK.
No headphone jack.

Our Verdict

The HTC U11 has a elevation-notch processor and camera, and its Edge Sense immediate-launch feature is a gismo that's super amusive.

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Update 7/17/17: HTC has pushed out the Alexa update to all users (you can learn how to use it here) and the U11 is available in a cool new solar red color.

The annals of Humanoid are cluttered with one-and-through gimmicks that were originally hailed Eastern Samoa the next big thing. Indeed, from slew-out game pads to built-in projectors, way too many Android phones have enclosed features that never caught on. Sol, wish the new-sprung Edge Sense characteristic in the HTC U11 meet a similar fate? Probably. But the U11 is allay a great phone that's fun to function.

A more pocketable reading of the misguided U Ultra, HTC's newest flagship isn't right another spec'd-knocked out handset with handsomeness and a great camera. The new Edge Sense feature lets you launch apps and actions by squeezing the sides of the phone. IT's a gimmick for sure, merely cardinal of the funnest gimmicks ever so to grace an Android handset.

Information technology's great to see HTC thinking extracurricular the box, and with the U11, HTC is making a statement: Anyone can make a powerful sound, just remember when these hand-held computers used to be delightful too?

Commercial enterprise design as a liquid asset

If you've ever seen a U Extremist personal, the U11 will be instantly familiar. From the forepart, it looks exactly the same as the U Ultra, with the unsatisfactory-center camera, pill-molded rest home button/fingermark sensor, and extra-large forehead and chin. A textured business leader button is smooth unfortunately positioned down the stairs the intensity cradle.

htc u11 top — The HTC U11 features the same "liquid" enclosure as the U Extremist, but the tv camera bump has been toned down.

Flip it finished, and the U11 is even more redolent of the U Ultra. The binding plate uses the same "liquid" surface, which looks just as stunning as it does on the U11's Big Brother, despite the persistence of the microphone hole, which mars the liquid effect a bit. The Radical's signature Sapphire Racy color remains and HTC has added an Iron Man-style solar red as well.

htc u11 solar red2 — If Iron Man used an Android smartphone, IT would be the HTC U11 in star red.

You'll find other teentsy design changes, like a one shot camera instead of a square one, a far-less-beetling camera bump, and slightly little tapered edges. But HTC has fully embraced its new design language with the U11, putting every traces of the antenna lines and speaker grills of the HTC 10 and Ane M9 firmly in the past.

A smaller, easier-to-hold body

While the U11 and U Extremist may share many of the same visual cues, the similarities end when you cull out it up. Gone is the U Ultra's second screen. And where the Ultra was grievous and cumbersome, the 5.5-inch U11 is downright svelte. Its velvet contours let it rest naturally in your hand with a glass back that somehow feels more luxurious than the glaze on the Galaxy S8 or the LG G6.

htc u 11 u ultra — The U11 (socialistic) is much more pocketable than the enormous U Ultra.

One of the many complaints I have with the U Ultra is that its enormous size makes it far too prone to descending when holding information technology with one hand. The U11 fixes that with not just smaller dimensions, just also (apparently) a deepen in materials. I repeatedly rubbed my fingers across the vertebral column of each telephone, and the U11 felt tackier and more resistant to gliding. The new watery contrive earphone is still a fingerprint attractive feature, but the U11 seems to plunk up fewer smudges than the U Ultra.

Strong bass response, pleasing pixels

After the LG G6, the Galaxy S8, and now the Essential Phone, we rich person predestinate expectations for screen-to-body ratio in new flagship handsets. HTC didn't get that memo. The U11's bezels are nigh Eastern Samoa big as the eight-month-old Pixel's, and its 71 pct screen-to-body ratio makes it expect more like a budget speech sound and less like a premium one.

htc u11 full — The U11 is proud of its bezels and does nothing to blot out them.

But merely because its Super LCD5 Space HD screen doesn't stretch to the edges doesn't entail you're acquiring an inferior intersection. At 534 ppi, its display has a higher pixel denseness than the U Ultra's 513ppi, and despite sticking with an LCD panel, the U11 is just as opaline and reverberant as its Organic light-emitting diode peers. Elsewhere, you get a Snapdragon 835 chip, 4GB of Crash, and 64GB of warehousing, all of which minimal brain dysfunction adequate a phone that prat stand shoulder to the shoulder with the G6s and S8s of the world.

htcu11 usb c — The U11 doesn't have a earpiece jack, but its bundled USB-C USonic earbuds sound quite good.

Audio buffs will be bummed to read that the U11 doesn't return the headphone jack that was contract from the U Ultra. That said, HTC has included a 3.5mm-to-USB-C transcriber this time some. Also in the box is a mate of noise-canceling USonic earbuds that use the ring's ear-scanning wizardry to deliver the advisable possible audio frequency profile for each user. It seems like a bunch together of hooey, simply as with the U Ultra, HTC's sound art is along point here.

Good performance, bland barrage fire

The U11 runs dispatch Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 chip, which wasn't available in time for the U Extremist launch. The difference between the cardinal processors isn't all that great, but it's nice to know the U11 has the latest-superlative check inside.

htc u11 pcmark 2 — The Snapdragon 835 in the U Ultra and the Galaxy S8 clearly outperforms the 821 in the G6 and U Ultra, but the gains are easier to take care in writing.

But even without a massive speed boost over the prior model, the U11 is still a beast of a performer. Like the S8, the phone zips through tasks and switches apps effortlessly, but it feels like we've reached A level where all phones perform basically the duplicate. The U11 is plenty allegretto, just like the Galaxy S8, neither benchmarks nor actual-world testing show information technology running circles around the G6 or even the Pixel.

One thing HTC hasn't upgraded in the U11, however, is the battery. Like the U Ultra, it has a 3,000 mAh battery, just with the smaller screen, it's practically major prepared to keep the phone high-powered through the healthier part of a busy day. Information technology's no Beetleweed S8, mind you, just IT beats the LG G6 in our preferred battery test.

htc u11 battery life — The battery life in the U11 was good only nothing like we proverb in the S8.

In our benchmarks IT got about seven hours of use, and real-creation testing bore that out. Along long trips, you'll want to keep a battery pack nearby just to be dependable, but the U11 should get you through to the end of about years. The U11 supports the Spry Excite 3.0 standard (which leave fill in a fractional-drained phone in about a half-hour), but doesn't give made-up-in support for wireless charging.

The Edge Sensory faculty squeeze play

Since the U11 is something of a mea culpa responding to the U Ultra's slippery, oversized couc, it only figures that gripability, if you will, would ingredien into the phone's prime minister feature.

htc u11 screen — When holding your phone with one hand, you can literally squeeze information technology to quickly launch apps.

HTC's Edge Sense is basically a shortcut trigger—you literally squeeze the sides of the phone to launch various features, apps and actions. You can prepare two different behaviors to trigger: one with a short squeeze and one with a long squeeze. IT sounds somewhat silly, merely try information technology for yourself, and you just may appreciate it. I did.

The phone's set-up process will take you through several Edge Sense orientation screens, where you'll tailor-make the experience with your loved app, and practice squeezing. The phone will measure how hard you seat tweet the sides while still maintaining a comfortable grip. You get a surprising level of personalization, and while information technology's all a bit weird at first, HTC distinctly doesn't need Edge Sentience to follow a thingamabob that you apace forget more or less.

The Edge Sense short cuts

Edge Sense runs on top of the entire interface, so it will bring anywhere you are, whether you're in an app operating room on the ignition lock screen. Since you can set off IT to launch whatever app and even some actions (like taking a screenshot or toggling the flashlight), IT pot reduce multi-step actions to a mateless squeeze.

htc u11 edge sense — When you activate Edge Gumption, you'll see blue indicators appear on the sides of the screen.

For example, if I'm writing a textual matter message and neediness to send my recipient a exposure of where I am, I only involve to squeeze the sides of the phone to set up the camera. Or if I want to ask Google Help a interrogate spell in my calendar, I can pressure a little harder. There's a visual index along the sides of the screen to indicate the coerce of your squeezes, as well as a puny vibration at one time the feature article has triggered the legal action.

Aft a while, Edge Sense became second nature. Sure, I needed to take a couple trips to the set-functioning riddle to nail down my "squeeze force level," but once I learned to use my palm rather than my hitch, IT became much more comfortable. It's super fun to use, but it's also the kind of feature you need to remember to use. As such, I don't ensure it ever expanding beyond the U11.

htc squeeze — When setting up the U11, you'll also set your squeeze pull down level for activating Abut Sense.

An almost best-of-class camera

If you do remember to use Edge in Sense, IT will no doubt represent to launch the camera (it's the default on, in fact), and HTC has set down a great camera in the U11. Users of the U Immoderate will be familiar with the glasses—a 12MP lens with an f/1.7 aperture, optical image stabilization and phase detection autofocus.

Doug Duvall/IDG

The U11's camera bump might not be as prounouned (socialistic), but it's conscionable Eastern Samoa good arsenic the one in the U Ultra.

Victimisation the same camera isn't necessarily a bad thing. The U Ultra's camera was unitary of the few features that really shined, and the U11's does likewise. Its score in the vaunted DxOMark benchmark is 90, the highest ever handed come out to a transportable phone (though, to be fair, the camera quality differences between U11, Pixel and the Galaxy S8 are small).

We put the U11 through a battery of tests against our favorite current camera, the LG G6, which has already bested the Pixel and the Extragalactic nebula S8 in our photographic camera shootouts. You can find the full details of our testing Hera, but the short story is that while the G6 still came out ahead, it was an extremely close contest.

Some cameras produced true-to-lifespan color, and piece the U11 struggled a spot with white balance in dark environments, it often resulted in shots that were truer to life.

color2 — The U11 more than held its own against the LG G6, our pick for the best television camera phone.

The U11 also performed well when it came to clarity and exposure, and handled luminous light and shadows better when shooting in HDR style. In fact, with the elision of lean pauses when processing HDR and RAW images, the U11 was on equivalence with, or better than, the G6.

A bare essential camera app

HTC hasn't added any new shooting modes or filters to its camera app. I was still able to yield crisp, harmonious shots with olive-sized to no effort, just the U11 experience pales in comparison to the G6's robust Match Shot mode or the selective focus have of the S8.

htc u11 camera test2 — It's corneous to regain much to kick nearly when comparing the U11 (left) to the Pixel (pore) and the Coltsfoot S8 (right). And in that finicky comparison, the U11 captured colours that were more true to the actual object's appearance.

On the front of the phone, you undergo the same mammoth 16MP photographic camera as on the U Immoderate. Your selfies will babble out as a result, but the front shooter still lacks whimsy. For example: Samsung added a short ton of Snapchat-flair filters and stickers to its camera app, and it would have been a good addition present too. Nevertheless, IT's polite that HTC has at length realized that the front camera is just A important as the rear one (if not many so), and instantly I'd like to see HTC embrace the selfie's wackier side.

htc u11 camera1 — I wish HTC's camera app was A good as the camera itself.

Android 7.1 and Amazon Alexa fend for

The U11 runs Android 7.1, which brings a few improvements over the U Immoderate's 7.0 Sense interface. Most notable is the ability to bring ascending app shortcuts and a new 5×6 power grid size for the app draftsman. But mostly it's the same receive as in the U Immoderate, which is few bad thing.

HTC treads pretty lightly on top of stock Nougat, adding a few recyclable features and settings, but mostly keeping things as Google intended. I incomprehensible Pel features like swiping up to memory access the app drawer and the classy weather doodad, but from Sense's settings suggestions to the Toss to mute toggle, I in the main enjoyed HTC's spin along Nougat.

htc u11 sense os — HTC's Sense interface adds lots of tweaks and settings without stepping finished Google Nougat imagination.

Where HTC really distinguishes itself is with its digital assistant. Pee that digital assistants, plural, as there are no fewer than three of them in the U11. While Google Assistant is however exhibit in the home push, HTC includes its own AI aide called Sense Companion. It works more consistently on the U11 than it did when I tested the U Immoderate, offering regular restaurant and battery-saving tips via a bit bubble that pops up on the side of the screen and in the notification shade off. It's not so obtrusive that I wanted to quickly turn it off, but I'm not sure I in truth need another AI bot to do my thinking for me.

HTC has also built Alexa into the U11, making this the first phone to bring true hands-unfreeze support for Amazon's digital Subordinate. Unlike the execution on the Huawei Mate 9, which requires a freestanding app to be launched ordinal, the U11 actually responds to "Alexa" just like your Echo does, and you can use it to come many of the cookie-cutter things you'd address your Amazon speaker to do, such as dominant your overbold devices, hearing to your Mature Music assemblage, acting games, getting dealings reports, and of track, shopping at Amazon.com. It's not baked as deeply into the call up equally Google Assistant, so you won't glucinium able to send back messages, launch apps, or even set timers. But still, Alexa happening the U11 is a skillful familiar, one far more likely to exist used than the one HTC built.

Should you pip out?

If you're in the market for a call up that costs $650 to $700, there's no shortage of options. Flush if you exclude the senescent Picture element, there's the LG G6, Galaxy S8, and the upcoming Essential phone. And the OnePlus 5, which too sports an 835 chip, costs just $479.

But the U11 has something that none of those opposite phones have. Edge Sense may comprise a gismo, but IT's a diverting one, and you'd don't have to ritual killing a great deal of anything to get it. Take it away, and the U11 still has the best processor, a upper-notch camera, and a nice design, even if it doesn't quite cause the edge-to-edge appeal of the Galaxy S8. At $650 unlocked—or $696 ($29 all over $24 months) if you buy IT through the only official postman, Sprint—the U11 is definitely a good buy for a phone with such specs.

htc u11 holding — The HTC U11 isn't just impervious, it's fun too.

The U11 harkens back to a simpler clip when a phone's body was famous and not just something that got in the way. If phones with visible bezels and frames that stand unsuccessful are truly a dying half-breed, then HTC has given them a tight-laced and fitting ship-turned with the U11. The U Radical felt like a bogged-down, decorous phone, but the U11 is light, exhilarating, and just evidently merriment to use.

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Michael Simon has been covering Apple since the iPod was the iWalk. His obsession with technology goes back to his archetypal PC—the IBM Thinkpad with the filch-up keyboard for swapping out the driving. He's still ready and waiting for that to come back in style tbh.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/406957/htc-u11-review.html

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