Gadgetory

is there such a thing as a dialed back version of a flagship device well that's exactly the kind of question that HTC wants to address with a more affordable in thus more accessible version of their flagship you 11 it's Joshua Vergara what's going on everybody and this is the HTC u 11 life and I've been using it for the last few days quick disclosure I have had the U 11 life for a little bit now and though I was initially prepared to give a more casual take on what is basically a phone that tries to emulate its flagship original it slowly but surely became obvious that I needed to give it a closer look and that's because the HTC u 11 life started to succeed now two versions of the HTC u 11 life are going to be available in different parts of the world the original version that you're seeing in my footage is the version that has HTC software and additions but there is going to be a global Edition that runs Android 1 that version of course will not use all of the different software editions from HTC and instead has a very lean version of stock Android it is also going to be made to a much wider audience while the HTC u 11 life that I am using will be available in the US and will be on t-mobile at some point moving forward now some parts of the U 11 life are obvious downgrade from the original the shrunken down size of the phone is mostly due to a smaller screen 5.2 inches in its size with full HD resolution I actually quite liked the blue color of this phone even if it is really reflective and does get really smudgy the size is really nice though due to that screen as one-handed usage has been really easy on this phone and that also helps with the edge sense which is of course the feature from the U 11 that now makes it onto the U 11 life it is one of those flagship features that still makes it on the mid-range version and we do quite like having it you can do a quick squeeze in order to do one function and then squeeze and hold in order to trigger yet another function and even then HTC is trying to further the functionality by adding in a beta program in which you can use the squeezes inside of particular applications I've tried to use it in a few different situations with spotty results in most cases the original global trigger is what goes off instead of the in-app trigger but we will continue testing this moving forward especially since users can actually program specific tabs in pretty much any application for squeezing or holding the rest of the bits and pieces are all dialed back in the expected form the Snapdragon 630 power of the device and so far has been able to keep up with my daily usage and it's backed up by three gigabytes of RAM and only 32 gigabytes of on-board storage even though you do have an SD card slot for expandable 'ti i've already played quite a few games on this phone like shadow 4 and i haven't noticed the phone struggle to keep up at all the performance is actually noticeably smooth which is a feather in the cap of the phone specifications and optimization so far it doesn't really feel like you're sacrificing too much by picking the you 11 life and the same goes for battery life with a 2600 milliamp hour battery that is found in the u 11 life with my kind of usage that includes a lot of media some gaming and plenty of audio playing I was able to get four hours of screen on time which I thought was pretty impressive for a battery size like this and also for the kind of phone that I was using in fact it's part of what made me want to continue testing the phone to make sure that this experience is definitely the norm now audio has always been a focus in one way or another for HTC and the u11 life tries to soften the blow of putting away the headphone jack by including a pair of USB C earbuds these u sonic compatible earbuds can be powered by the phone for active noise-cancelling and this is all found inside of the settings and can be triggered in the notification shade it will try to cater the earbuds for a better perl file for noise cancelling and for the most part I've had a good time with these earbuds music and YouTube in particular have been a blast to enjoy due to this sound experience but there is something that we can't really let slide and while it's nice that these HTC earphones are included in the box there is no adapter in the box for using your own headphones instead of putting one in the Box users will have to buy an adapter separately for an extra cost we felt the need to really mention what could be a contentious choice by HTC now there's another place where HTC wanted to continue the high-end experience as much as possible and it continues in the cameras HTC put 16 megapixel cameras on both sides of this phone so that you would actually have some pretty high-quality selfies and so far that seems to be the case the rear camera is different from the 12 megapixel shooter of the original u 11 and both of these 16 megapixel cameras move up to an aperture of f28 for personally I have not spent enough time with the original HTC u 11 which is the reason why I want to give the camera a little bit more time in terms of testing I'm going to be getting my hands on a u 11 so that I can see how the quality changes from the original flagship to this more affordable life edition and finally there is the software which in my case involves HTC Sense now some people might not like HTC's take on Android but it's certainly less in-your-face than plenty of other iterations and you'll get even less of that with the Android 1 Edition which uses a very stripped-down version of Android that is made to make the phone even more affordable HTC Sense feed returns as well where social media posts can be accumulated in a grid format for easy viewing aside from that a number of features that you may be familiar with from other HTC devices returns here and we'll get into those more in our full review but the main addition that I want to mention here is HTC Alexa Amazon Alexa makes it onto the U 11 life as well so that you have more than one voice assistant available with this phone as an avid Google assistant user I'm still getting a further feel for Alexa as a potential daily voice assistant and it will be taken into consideration for our full review I'll try to use Alexa more than Google assistant and see if it actually provides a worthy replacement but nonetheless it is good to have a choice between two of the major assistance available now so for all that HTC is trying to do with this device the hope is that the you 11 experience can be had for less money and then of course is going to hinge on the price and as we mentioned before different versions of the you 11 life will be available with different types of software and in almost all cases the phone will sell for 349 dollars which is a pretty aggressive price for a phone that so far has been succeeding in being a reliable version of a flagship phone that doesn't sacrifice too much in the few days that I've used this phone as my daily driver I've been a bit surprised at how easily has handled my everyday tasks and usage it would be easy to just dismiss a lesser version of a flagship phone but real world experience with the you 11 life has me thinking a little bit harder stay tuned for my full review and let us know what you think of the you 11 life and indeed the other version of the you 11 that is not going to be making it to more markets but is still a new version of the you 11 flagship we'll see you all in the comments down below and don't forget to give us some likes on these videos because we'd love to see those thumbs up and then subscribe to the channel if you haven't already because we are your source for all things Android