Gadgetory

hey it's Joshua for Gaara what's going on everybody and this is the HTC u 11 life now we already have a review of this phone here at Android authority done by Chris Carlin and he reviewed the Android one edition many of his positive thoughts I echo in this video so I figured I would do something a little bit different from this video review let us know what you think about it in the comments down below now the main difference between my version of HTC's new device and the one that Chris Carlin reviewed is the software experience because his was Android 1 and I have HTC Sense but this is the version you also get in the US while the Android 1 Edition is available in more places outside of the States so with that in mind let's talk about the software experience first HTC Sense obviously is what you get here about one really nice benefit that I actually just experienced in the last few days was an update to Android 8.0 Oreo what HTC Sense does benefit from some of those additions that we might have already enjoyed on devices like the pixel 2 for example pressing and holding on an icon in the home screens allows you to get to a few quick functions in these shortcuts on top of that you also have the ability to do picture in picture with an application like YouTube you would be able to play a video for example and when you press the home button you'll get a version of the video that floats on top of your workspace so you would still be able to do other things while you're still enjoying something like a YouTube video this also works with applications like Google Maps so if you're going to get navigation done you can do even more on top of it and that comes on top of software you might be familiar with from HTC including blinkfeed which has always been a part of sense and it is a good agricultural media feeds into just one easy to look at an easily scrollable feed but if we are going to talk about features that this phone has alongside the pixel 2 then of course we have edge sense what you can do here is squeeze the phone and it will bring up any number of functions and it doesn't necessarily have to be a Google assistant like I have here you're able to set it to pretty much any app or any function that it provides but you can also squeeze and hold the device in order to do some other functions as well in my case I have it set to taking the screen shot which I actually do quite often so it's nice to be able to do it quickly as you can see here there are also some options in order to do app squeezes so you can do something like going to the camera and squeeze it in order to take a photo you can go into maps and squeeze it to zoom into the map or you can program your own with a beta function that allows you to provide some taps and holds inside of these applications in order for you to program them to a squeeze and finally we're going to go outside the Google ecosystem a little bit to show the other assistance that HTC originally programmed for the simple squeeze and that is HTC Alexa that's right Amazon Alexa does come on this device and it is another way for you to get what you might already enjoy on an echo in your household on a portable device and that's the main function of it I personally found that HTC Alexa didn't really provide as many functions that I'm used to using on Google assistant like opening up YouTube to watch certain videos or opening up my music apps to play music and podcasts so those are the main differences between the two versions of the HTC u 11 life but let's take a look at the actual device itself the rest of the body is made of plastic and does not necessarily scream premium and of course because you have a glossy back here you are going to get a lot of fingerprints which is basically the case here and these are all fingerprints that I just got while filming this video the phone doesn't scream premium by any means but HTC has found a way of mitigating that as there is a ip67 certification for water and dust resistance so even if it doesn't feel like the strongest phone out there it can take more than it lets on but of course we get down to the bottom and this is where a lot of points of contention might be discovered you have a USB type-c port that is over to the side which is a little bit odd and it's a bit of a throwback to much older HTC devices you have a bottom mounted firing speaker here which is a single unit it doesn't really get too loud it gets pretty loud but it also doesn't sound too great so even if the speaker experience might not be the best you do get some great headphones in the box and they are these u sonic compatible earbuds that provide really punchy bass and actually a very enjoyable soundstage so what you have here is probably the best set of headphones I have ever been included or bundled with a particular phone inside the box they do have a USB C connecting port here on the bottom which means that these are the headphones that you are expected to use with you 11 live at all times now the reason why I say that is because the phone does not come with a headphone jack adapter and that's a kind of big bummer because it requires you to spend a little bit more than the affordable price for the phone by getting the adapter on HTC's own website and this is all powered by a specification sheet that should tell you what the performance will basically be like now while this phone is going to falter a little bit in terms of performance compared to the snapdragon 835 and other phones with even more gigabytes of RAM that doesn't mean that it's not a reliable performer even though there might be that little bit of slowdown with applications we still found that this phone was enjoyable to use on the daily and it got us through pretty much any task that we threw at it no matter what even gaming even if it takes a little while for an for a game to load up and there might be some slowdown where you're doing multitasking like the picture-in-picture we mentioned earlier and finally let's talk about the camera now this is one area where HTC made sure not to skimp out on the specifications one of the main issues with the camera is just in the app itself now this has more to do with the performance than anything else but you do get a number of modes here it's just that the app is still a little bit slow there is some shutter lag and you might need to have some patience before getting that perfect shot after you're fiddling with the exposure compensation and maybe trying to find what mode you want to use and waiting for it to actually load that up but the you 11 life has proven itself a reliable companion because of its good color reproduction and sharpness in all but the low-light situations things do fall apart pretty easily even when you're indoors where there's less light but with the steady hand you can still get some good photos without the stabilization I compared pictures between this and the original u11 and found that the U 11 life still provided some pretty comparable quality photos the main reason why the U 11 life falters is because of its higher aperture and also the lack of OIS like we've already mentioned the original u 11 obviously gets better specifications overall but the lower specifications of the u 11 life proportionally reflect what its overall prices and that's actually the story of the U 11 life in general now this is a phone that takes the flagship experience and just proportionally brings them down in order to reflect the price point there are times when the camera might actually remind us that we're using a budget device but HTC has done a good job in making sure you don't feel like you're really missing out that's the best part about this phone that comes in at 300 and $50 $349 to be exact or $300 outright if you happen to be on the t-mobile network and if you are looking to get a phone on t-mobile for a cheap price $12 a month is kind of one of the best entry points or a device like this so it's refreshing to approach the end of the year when the high note struck by a phone that only cost that much no matter which version you pick the cents Edition or the Android one Edition the main story here is the phones value for money HTC has made a mid-range version of their flagship device that shouldn't actually make anyone feel like they're missing out and we think that that's the best part of it as always thank you guys very much for watching and we hope you enjoyed this review of the HTC u 11 life again I tried to do something a little bit different with this video so make sure you go into the comments section down below let us know how you feel about this format and let us know if we should try it out again in the future it's just something I wanted to try out especially because we have another review of it so you're getting a double dose of this wonderful phone for a wonderful price keep it tuned to Android authority for even more about the HTC u 11 life the U 11 line in general and all of the flagships and mid-range devices we have reviewed in 2017 we're coming up on the end of the year so stay tuned for our holiday gift guides and our holiday guides to some of the best devices that we've seen this year and remember to subscribe to the channel if you haven't already to keep up with that and even more because we are your source for all things Android