Gadgetory

what's up guys lon here from Android Authority and this is the HTC u ultra this is HTC's biggest phone so far for 2017 both literally and figuratively this is a behemoth of a smart phone it's even bigger than some of the most current flagship like the LG v20 Google's pixel XL or the iPhone 7 plus and I don't think we've seen a flagship phone this large since Google's Nexus 6 it's almost annoyingly big and a lot of that has to do with the 5.7 inch screen an additional secondary ticker display and the extremely chunky bezels on all sides if you like big phones you probably won't have a problem with it but it's definitely not a phone that was meant to be used with one hand on the bottom bezel is a solid state home button that also functions as a fingerprint sensor which does work pretty well it's fast and accurate to unlock without much trouble but the capacitive keys flanking the home button are a different story instead of being centered they sit far too low on the bezel and they're also very tiny capacitive keys this makes them very difficult to tap on with accuracy and I can't tell you how many times I would tap away and completely miss the buttons entirely because of how low and small they are the build quality of you ultra is pretty typical HTC and nothing short of what you would expect from the company but it's an all new design that we haven't seen from HTC before they have jumped on the glass and metal bandwagon with metal along the sides and a glass exterior on the front and back the back has a very unique and super reflective mirror like finish and it looks really beautiful and eye catching on the phone is actually clean but the cleanest of phones will ever look is when you first take it out of the box glass is already naturally hard to keep clean but the reflective coating makes fingerprints smudges and dust even more prominent especially around the bulging camera lens which seems to be a huge magnet for dust and there's almost no point in trying to clean it because it just collects dust all over again in just a matter of minutes the u ultra isn't all that thin of a phone either so it's very surprising how big the camera bump is and it's almost confusing as to why protrudes as much as it does equally as confusing is the lack of a headphone jack it's certainly thick enough to house a headphone jack so hc' could have included one if they wanted the only real reasoning you ultra to not have a headphone jack it's so that HTC can push people to use their you sonic USBC earbuds that come bundled with a u ultra and if you want to use a pair of standard three-and-a-half millimeter earbuds or headphones you'll have to supply your own adapter because the u ultra does not come with one we all know that USB C is the future but if your device is still big enough to fit a headphone jack it should have a headphone jack for external audio that you ultra features the same speaker setup that we saw on last year's HTC 10 it's a tweeter and woofer combo with a front facing speaker where the earpiece is located and another speaker down along the bottom it is pretty loud but the quality that you get from these speakers will depend on the equalizer setting that you decide to use oddly enough the theater mode actually sounds way better than the music mode no matter what it is you're listening to it's a much fuller and deeper sound whereas the music mode sounds much more hollow in comparison usually with phones this big you would also expect a massive battery to be inside and it's still a respectable size at 3000 milliamp hours but when you look at the overall footprint of the phone three thousand milliamp hours just sounds smaller than what this phone should have to put things into perspective LG's current flagship the LG G six has the same sized display in a smaller body but still manages to pack a bigger battery and several other phones like the one plus 3t and Samsung's s7 edge also have smaller bodies with significantly bigger batteries despite having a glass back the u ultra does not have wireless charging so the new material choice here was clearly for aesthetics and not for any other added benefits it does have fast charging for quick charge ups and top offs which you might end up using more often you would like because the 3000 milliamp hour battery leads to just average battery life it's good enough to last a full day of average use but don't expect to have much left over when you're ready to wind down for the night there are a handful of positives about the U ultra and the screen is definitely one of them the 5.7 inch quad HD Super LCD 5 display looks fantastic and HTC has always done a great job with LCD it's very sharp very contrasty and vibrant in color and easily readable and direct sunlight the only glaring problem with this screen is that exhibit some very noticeable light bleed coming from the upper left corner right below the front-facing camera which doesn't necessarily detract from the overall display but once you see for the first time it can be a little hard to forget about the HTC u Ultra also comes with a secondary ticker display and if we're being perfectly honest here it's pretty much a carbon copy of LG secondary display from the v20 it does exactly all the same things it can show you any incoming notifications so whether give you shortcuts to some of your favorite apps and contacts play music and give you any upcoming calendar events that you might have within the next 24 hours it also works when the main screen is turned off and from here it will still show you notifications along with basic info like the time and date and you also have toggles to some system settings such as Wi-Fi Bluetooth and the camera flash it has auto wake functionality built in which I like so when you pick the phone up it'll automatically wake up so you can see any notifications you might have missed or just simply check the time and weather waking up the entire display inside it's got a top-tier set of specs will be snap during a 21 4 gigabytes of RAM 64 gigs of internal storage and a micro SD card slot if you want to expand upon that in real-world use there's really no surprises here it's very fluid with general navigation and scrolling has great touch response is quick to launch apps and multitask and runs games with silky smooth frame rates there's no noticeable issues here at all with lag or drop frames the phone smooth performance also has a lot to do with the software experience it's running HTC Sense but this time on top of Android 7.0 nougat and although HTC Sense is starting to feel a little dated at this point it's still one of the cleanest software skins out there you get all the usual features like HTC blinkfeed and highly customizable theme engine but it still maintains a lightweight stock look and feel because this is being sold completely unlocked you also won't have to deal with any unnecessary carrier bloatware the newest addition to HTC software is there Sense companion which is their own take on AI assistance it's supposed to provide suggestions and reminders based on your personal usage and location and I've had this service enabled for the past week that I've been using the U ultra and I haven't received a single suggestion HTT also markets the services having built-in voice recognition but from what I can tell there's no voice recognition to be found honestly you're better off using Google assistant which the U ultra does come with because we sense companion doesn't seem to do anything that Google isn't already doing for you another really strong point for the U ultra is the cameras it's got a 16 megapixel front facing shooter that takes excellent selfies and the rear camera is no slouch either it's a 12 megapixel ultra pixel camera with a large 1.5 5 micron pixel size F 1.8 aperture laser and phase detection autofocus and optical image stabilization the camera is very quick to launch fast to focus and snap photos and the floaters that it takes are quite good I would say it's on par with Google's pixel and just like the pixel issues with HDR enabled by default the photos are crisp they're clear the color reproduction is pleasant and it does quite well with handling exposure even in high contrast situation HD sees camera experience is clean and easy to use and offers a handful of shooting modes including a pro mode with the ability to shoot in RAW if you're willing to venture outside the camera's already fantastic auto mode moving into low-light there is a noticeable increase in noise which is to be effective any smartphone camera but the overall level detail and clarity is still quite good thanks to large pixels and optical image stabilization and the camera is still very fast at snapping photos in low-light where start to get weird is when there are a lot of prominent light sources like street lamps or traffic lights you wind up with photos I have a bunch of random floating light particles and this is something you can see directly in the viewfinder as you're taking the photo at first I thought that maybe the camera sensor was not clean but after cleaning the lens off the problem was still there and because you can see it in the viewfinder before snapping the photo it leads me to believe that this is a hardware issue and not a software post-processing problem it's somewhat reminiscent of the halo effect that Google's pixel phones were having and it's hard to say what the root cause of it is they could either be from the extremely reflective backing or there's something physically wrong with the sensor itself either way hopefully it's something that HTC can actually address just to be clear the HDD u ultra is not a bad phone by any stretch of the imagination in this day and age it's hard to find a phone that is truly bad but we've got to the point where we're looking for phones that offer the most value for the money and are doing something different that would compel you to buy it and the hcu ultra just isn't doing that it has a great set of specs a really eye-catching design and a solid camera but the small battery and lack of a headphone jack is questionable at best and it's also missing features that are starting to become more common like wireless charging and dust and water resistance that makes the $750 price tag extremely hard to justify and unfortunately makes the phone less accessible to consumers it's a price that I think only HTC diehards would be willing to bear and if so then this is the phone for you but it's certainly not the phone for me as always thank you guys so much for watching this video I hope you enjoyed this review of the HTC u ultra if you did please give the thumbs up down below and also subscribe to the channel which is also down below if you haven't already and hit that notification bell while you're at it so you don't miss out on our future videos when they go live and check us out on social media instagram twitter snapchat 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