Gadgetory

what makes a good phone great is it a smoke bomb across the board is a revolutionary new design is it a bigger battery a better camera maybe it's the latest version of Android and more power than you know what to do with if that's what it takes then the HTC u11 truly is a great fine it has all the specs in numbers you could ask for in the 2017 flagship from 6 gig of ram 128 gig of storage and the snapdragon 835 - microSD expansion and an ip68 rating there is no headphone jack of course but that shouldn't come as a surprise seeing as HTC was among the first to abandon it also absent is a secondary camera and this is where we have to start asking ourselves a few questions does a secondary camera really matter the pixel 2 does perfectly fine without one and so too does the u 11 Plus HTC doesn't go in for any fate portrait mode blurring of the background so it's really up to you if you think the additional hardware really makes that much of a difference on other phones but the U 11 plus is still perfectly capable of capturing lots of detail HDR boost does a great job of pulling dynamic range out of some pretty tough lighting and colors are insanely poppy and generally very accurate you won't get a wide angle or zoom lens here but you will get reliably good quality images and for many that will be perfectly fine the 11 plus features a single ultra pixel 3 lens at F 1.7 aperture with optical image stabilization and dual pixel face detection autofocus what all that means is a nice natural-looking bokeh first focusing no real need for super steady hands and excellent low-light performance you know it does creep in in very dark environments and there's the occasional blown out highlight at night but right now it's a toss-up between the mate temp rode the pixel 2 and the u 11 plus for my favorite low-light shooter well everyone else has been adding a secondary camera play lots of other companies including HTC have been steadily removing the headphone HTC clearly recognizes the choice has unpopular so the you 11 plus includes a pair of very decent you sonic active noise-cancelling earbuds along with the USB type-c 2 3.5 ml adapter when you plug those you sonic buds in you can map the inside of your ear to better suit the you Elevens audio to your particular hearing profile the 11 plus has 30% louder volume than the you 11 and it sounds every bit as awesome I'm not a huge fan of the placement of the bottom firing speaker because it's all too easy to cover up with your hand while gaming throwing that delicate balance between the woofer and earpiece tweeter out of whack that HTC has always done better audio than most and you've 11 plus is no exception another thing HTC has traditionally been very good at is smart phone design from the iconic One m7 to the new liquid design language in the you 11 series but ACC also had an unhealthy addiction to flat bezels in the past about how that the company has finally begun to kick in the U 11 plus the six inch qHD plus IPS LCD Grace's the front of the U 11 plus providing a crisp if not exactly bright workspace HTC hasn't gone in for rounded corners on the display but it has adopted the new 18 to 9 a speck ratio that is quickly becoming the new normal that's not AMOLED here either so VR fans will have to look elsewhere but the LCD panel does haven't always on display mode and you'll still get plenty of screen on time from the 11 plus that brings me to the single greatest flaw with the U 11 plus other features like a secondary camera or the headphone jack might be a deal-breaker for some but just as many people can live perfectly fine without them but the U 11 plus has the single dimmest display I have seen on a smart phone in a long time it's almost unbearably dim to the point that outdoor legibility isn't impossible even at 100% the HDR 10 update that rolled out a little while back did nothing to improve the max brightness of the Super LCD 6 display and while it looks great inside going outside turns it into a bit of a nightmare people with that display bumped uploaded the 3930 milliamp-hour battery will keep you going for quite a while I get my display at about 50% while I was inside shooting this review and I reliably got over seven hours of screen on time assisted by the default battery saver mode on the 11 plus if you keep the display cranked up all the way or disable battery saver for some obscure reason then you can expect much lower results but even with occasionally having to bump the screen brightness right off I could still get through a solid day and a half of usage despite the glass backing of view 11 plus there is no wireless charging here so be aware of that if you're a fan speaking of the glass vacuum the Gorilla Glass 5 they coach the front and back of the you 11 plus is insanely slippery put this phone down on the wrong table on either side and it will slowly migrate itself to the floor while you're not looking there's an included case in the box and I'd advise you to make use of it if not to limit that you 11 pluses suicidal tendencies then at least a protective gorgeous and very slippery foam that same buttery smoothness appears on the inside of the 11 plus 2 with Android aurilla out of the box and HTC Sense skipping along on top like a stone on a frozen lake HTC has always made fast and reliable software and senses stop like interface an unloaded feature set makes the U 11 plus about the fastest Android experience outside the pixel to edge sensors onboard so you can map very short cuts to squeezes of the smartphone frame some finest gimmicky that I actually find a pretty intuitive and handy an interesting new feature on the 11 class is the edge launcher app I will shortcut pickin that's kind of like Samsung's edge panels but in a form that you might actually use you can assign up to 55 shortcuts here from your favorite apps and contacts to quick settings toggles a couple of intuitive gestures borrowed from elsewhere have also made their way to the U 11 plus where a swipe up on the home screen will open the app drawer and a swipe down will summon the notification shade they make using a phone as tall as this much more manageable and as always with HTC software they implement it very well HTC lets you add up to five buttons to the nav bar on the home screen and there's an entire second bar to the right that can have another five shortcuts on it there's a whole bunch of other great features included on the HTC u 11 but despite all the positive things I can say about it there's one big issue that stops it from being the truly great phone that HTC sorely needs like they're saying that the best camera is the one you have on you the best smartphone can only be one that you can actually buy and that's where HTC HTC EVO 11 plus displayed it being the best smartphone the company has ever made they did themselves a great disservice plain not making it available in the US market if you live in Europe or Asia where the phone is available then I'd wholeheartedly recommend it it nails the basics incredibly well from camera and battery to performance and software it even kicks HTC's love of big bezels to the curve it will work on AT&T or t-mobile if you want to import one but not making this phone full in North America was a big mistake on HTC's part at 699 pounds or 799 euros it's cheaper than the pixel 2 or galaxy si and right in line to the may 10 Pro its most obvious competitor well we can only imagine how awesome the 11 plus would have been as a pixel it's still an incredible phone in its own right the only problem is getting ahold of one hit that like and subscribe button if you've enjoyed this video make sure you ring the notification bell if you want to know when we upload future videos and stay tuned to android authority dot-com in future because we are your source for all things Android