Gadgetory

every phone that come out in the past year or so has had its own thing or giving some have elongated screens some of dual cameras some of modular accessories you can snap on the back of the phone not all of these things are bad so we're actually quite good but they're always for smartphone makers to take they're otherwise very similar devices make them a little bit different HTC's new you 11 isn't unique here it definitely has its own gimmick but before I get into that let's talk about the parts of the phone you actually care about because for the most part you 11 is a really good premium smartphone the you 11 is 600 of $49 unlocked from HTC or just under 700 bucks if you get a from Sprint which is the only carrier selling the phone here in the US that's premium pricing right up against the best phones you can get from Apple or Samsung now fortunately the U 11 can hang in this premium space it's got a great 5.5 inch display that's vibrant and colorful premium build and a really eye-catching design it's got a solid in the liable camera and really fast performance the Elevens glass back at something it's just really vibrant and reflective especially in my blue review unit it's super nice to look at it as typical for HTC really well-made too and it's finally water resistant the U 11 is ip67 rated just like the iPhone 7 but with glass or compromises and this one is both a fingerprint magnet and it's pretty slippery to hold now HTC throws in a basic plastic case in the box of the 11 but that gets scratched up really quickly and covers up that nice beautiful color so I think it's a poor compromise I've been most impressed with the U 11 fast performance it's got a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor and 4 gigabytes of RAM and it's perhaps the fastest Android phone I've used outside of Google's own pixel apps open really quickly the interface is really fluid and scrolling is just as smooth as you want it to be the you 11 12 megapixel camera is also really impressive it can take good photos in most any lighting conditions in a capture steady 4k video with something called 3d audio now it may not win every head-to-head competition with a pixel f8 or iPhone but the Elevens camera didn't leave me wanting whenever I used it either speaking of audio the u 11 speakers are really loud and really clear so if you've been a fan of HTC's boomsound speakers in the past you won't be disappointed here but you might be disappointed by the lack of a headphone jack which is as annoying here as it is on any other phone that doesn't have one HTC does include an adapter and a set of surprisingly good USB see headphones in the box but those headphones only work of EU 11 champions with your laptop or tablet or whatever other device you might carry around you probably already know whether this would be a problem C or not but it didn't take me long to miss the headphone jack when I got into my car and couldn't plug into the aux port now battery life could be better that's not to say it's bad but it's just not as impressive as a snappy performance and the rest of the phone most things I'm able to get through to evening before charging up but this really isn't a small phone and to be great if we could handle even more than a day of heavy use out of the box the U 11 is running the latest software from Google Android 7.1.1 and it has some light customization from HTC and I think the software is great it's fast easy to use and it's not too far away from what Google Offers on the pixel you 11 even supports app icon shortcuts and in standard launcher now there's not one but two intelligent assistants on the U 11 and soon there's going to be a third you already know how Google assistant works and you can use okay Google to launch it even when the screen is off agency has also included its own assistant that tries to give you helpful tips on when to charge your phone where to go for lunch and what the weather will be like tomorrow but most of these are pretty obvious things or already handled better by Google's own assistant I'm more excited about the forthcoming Alexa integration which will allow me to yell LexA and my phone to do a bunch of things I normally ask an echo to do that's not gonna be available till later to summer so I haven't been able to test it yet okay so at the beginning of this I told you there was going to be a gimmick so here it is HTC expects you to squeeze the sides of this phone to do things you can launch an app turn on a flashlight launch Google assistant or do other tasks with either a short or long squeeze now the feature works as advertised and I had no problem activating it but I'm just not sure why I'd ever want to do this they're already quicker and more comfortable ways to do many of these tasks and squeezing the sides of a phone never feels normal or intuitive it seems like this feature is a little half-baked and maybe it'll get more interesting in the future right now it's a totally forgettable gimmick so no the u11 doesn't have an edge to edge screen it doesn't have a dual camera setup and it doesn't have modular accessories they can snap on to the back of it it's very much a traditional smartphone just like we've expected smartphones to be for the past 10 years but at the same time it's a really good smart phone so if that's all you're looking for the U 11 is it I believe you okay Google to wake the phone up like that owned I got owned myself