Gadgetory

what's up guys lon here from Android authority and HCC's newest smartphone is the phone that you can squeeze but should you squeeze the money out of your wallet to buy one let's find out with the HTC u 11 did you really just have me say that so I've had my hands on the HTC u 11 ever since it got announced in Taipei and I started out using a Taiwanese version of the U 11 and then later switched to a US model running on Sprint so I've had quite a bit of time using the U 11 as my main device and with the U ultra ultimately turning out to be a flop HTC really needed to deliver and I can wholeheartedly say that it certainly does do that in pretty much every aspect in terms of overall specs the U 11 ticks all the right boxes the phone comes with 64 gigabytes of internal storage and you can add additional storage via microSD with the latest Snapdragon 835 and four gigabytes of RAM the phone is just as fast and as fluid as you would expect touch response and scrolling is excellent and it runs apps and high-end games with no issues at all multitasking is also nice and quick but I do notice that it's quite aggressive with closing apps after only opening around five or six not a big deal for me personally but it is something worth noting build quality of course is nothing less than what you expect from HTC it's a solid slab of two pieces of glass with an aluminum frame sandwiched in between rounded corners and curved edges along both the front and rear panels for a very seamless and comfortable design it's a formula that we've seen many times before but what really makes the U 11 standout is the liquid glass service on the rear panel it's very unique in eye catching and the way some of the colors can shift and change depending on the angle and how the light hits it is a very cool effect the only downside is that it gets mucked up by fingerprints pretty easily and because of how reflective and mirror-like the finish is it's a lot more noticeable over a more traditional piece of glass the U 11 features the same woofer and tweeter speaker combo that we first saw on last year's HTC 10 but this year it's been improved significantly it's much louder with better clarity and HTC is leveraging the entire phone as an acoustic chamber to make this happen you can literally feel the audio resonate throughout the entire phone when holding it in your hand and there's a huge difference when listening to the U 11 and the HTTP 10 side-by-side [Laughter] Oh for internal audio the u11 doesn't have a headphone jack but I think it's completely forgivable considering how good the audio sounds through the USB type-c port the use sonic earbuds are some of the best sounding pair of earbuds I've ever listened to they're able to analyze and tune audio specifically for your ear structure and they also feature active noise cancellation there is a three-and-a-half millimeter to USB type-c adapter included with the u 11 to let you plug in any headphones of your choice but this will also give you much better audio quality because it has a DAC built inside of it and should allow you to drive higher impedance headphones another improvement that HTC has made on the U 11 over previous HTC phones is the IP rating the u 11 is ip67 certified which is a huge step up from the IP 53 that's on the HTC 10 or the pixel this means the phone is completely dust tight and can survive being submerged in water with so many high-end phones having either IP 67 or IP 68 this was definitely a smart move for HTC to make if they want the U 11 to compete taking a look at the U 11 from the front you have the standard array of capacitive keys and home button that also doubles as a fingerprint sensor and it works quite well at unlocking the phone with accuracy reliability and speed above that of course is the display and instead of jumping on the bandwagon and doing a tall and narrow screen with super thin bezels like LG or Samsung HTC has gone the more traditional route it's a 5.5 inch quad HD display with 16 by 9 aspect ratio and it's surrounded by pretty thick bezel it's not going to turn any heads like a g6 or s8 but the quality of the screen itself is fantastic it's very sharp and crisp with excellent viewing angles contrast and vibrant colors it's plenty bright so outdoor visibility is also quite good but I do wish that it got much dimmer it feels a little too bright when using the phone at night or in the dark but that's really a minor complaint for what is otherwise a great-looking screen not a whole lot has changed with the software on the U 11 when compared to the U ultra or even last year's HTTP 10 it's running on Android 7.1.1 with HTC Sense and you have all the familiar features like blinkfeed the vertical scrolling app drawer and HTC's custom themes since it's still one of the cleanest takes on android but it is starting to feel like it needs a refresh and the u11 could have been that perfect opportunity for HTC to do that I do appreciate that the U 11 doesn't come pre-installed with a whole lot of bloatware even on the Sprint version there's only a couple of apps installed by the carrier but obviously if you want the least amount of pre-installed apps the unlocked version would be the way to go the big standout feature is the new edged Sense technology which is basically HTC shortcut for accessing different functions or apps on your phone you can literally make it do anything you can have it open up the camera take a selfie turn on the flash launch Google assistant or open up any one of your favorite apps some companies like to add an additional button HTC said no no no no we're going to make the phone squeeze a hole I know it sounds like a really weird thing to do but it does work quite well and it's actually pretty intuitive and I would say it's probably the most intuitive gesture that we've seen since Motorola's risk twist of the phone to launch the camera ai assistants are a big part of smartphones right now and aside from Google assistant you also have HTC sense companion this will give you suggestions based on your location or time of day and learn your usage habits over time so it can provide you with information that it thinks you would like to know for example it can randomly update you with the weather provide restaurant recommendations when it's time for lunch or dinner remind you to charge your phone or give you traffic updates based on your commute and all these will show up in a card style layout if any of this sounds familiar that's because Google already does a lot of this for you so there's no real surprises here but it does work fairly well if you choose to use it the big difference is it doesn't have a voice component so you'll still be relying on Google assistant for any voice dictation the u11 does a lot of things well but none of that really matters if the phone can't laugh all day thankfully battery life on the u 11 is extremely good I know the 3000 milliamp hour battery may sound fairly average by today's standards but it's never struggled to get me through a full day with heavy use I've never had to charge this phone in the middle of the day but it does have quick charge 3.0 to make the charging process easy and quick and I think it's very impressive that HCC has been able to extend this phone's battery life without resorting to shoving in the largest battery they can find the last big piece of the puzzle is the camera and there's a lot of expectations with this camera considering it currently holds the highest rating for a smartphone camera by DX Oh mark the main camera on the back is an all new 12 megapixel sensor that HTC is dubbing the ultra pixel three and it's optically stabilized with a bright F 1.7 aperture it's also leveraging a new feature called HDR boost that will auto process every photo as HDR to give you the clearest and most well balanced photo possible it's very similar to what Google has done with the pixel the front-facing camera no longer has optical image stabilization like the HTC 10 did but in return you're getting a much higher resolution 16 megapixel camera for capturing sharper and better looking selfies and it's also capable of capturing photos using the HDR boost the good news is the camera does live up to the hype it takes impressively good-looking photos there's plenty of detail and colors are more on the natural side and not overly vibrant like what you would get on a Galaxy s8 low-light photos are still incredibly sharp and well detailed noise levels are kept very well under control and the noise that you do see is very fine and compact it's not splotchy or filled with artifacts so it doesn't make much of an impact to the overall quality of photos that are taken in low-light although this is a completely new sensor it has one issue in low-light that the u ultra also had highlights are very heavily overblown and snapping photos of light sources such as street lamps or traffic lights caused a lot of streaking lens flares and floating light particles because it happened on the u ultra and now the u 11 I firmly believe that this is possibly being caused by the phone's reflective back I have my doubts on whether this is something HTC can actually fix but it's probably not an issue that very many people are going to be bothered by the biggest hurdle for HTC is will they be able to get this phone to sell it's only being sold directly by one US carrier that carrier being Sprint and unlocked it cost six hundred and fifty dollars which is certainly cheaper than the you ultra and other competing flagships like the galaxy s 8 but it's still not exactly impulse by territory I'm not necessarily suggesting that the phone is overpriced but most people still aren't comfortable with dropping that much money on a smartphone right on the spot especially if they've never seen it before HTC has also put themselves at a huge disadvantage by only being able to get this phone on one carrier while phones like the g6 and the FA are on all major US carriers that means that mostly sales will probably coming through online channels let's just hope that more consumers are comfortable with buying phones outside of carrier stores because if you're looking for a new smartphone the U 11 is a phone that you definitely shouldn't overlook as always thank you guys so much for watching this video I hope you enjoyed this review of the HTC u 11 let us know your thoughts down in the comments below and if you enjoyed this video give it a thumbs up it's definitely not going to hurt you and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and hit that notification bell while you're at it so don't miss out on future videos and check us out on social media instagram twitter snapchat google+ all that good stuff will be linked down below and check the website as well and Jory calm because we are your source for all things Android