After launching the U Ultra and U Play smartphones in India earlier this year, the Taiwanese handset-maker HTC on Friday launched its latest flagship Android smartphone, aka “HTC U11” in India at an event in New Delhi. Priced at Rs. 51,990, the HTC U11 premium device will be made available for purchase through e-commerce website Amazon.in and all offline leading retail stores across the country from last week of June. And the pre-booking services will start from June 17 (Saturday) on HTC’s online store. In the Indian smartphone market, the HTC U11 has been launched in 6GB RAM with 128GB inbuilt storage variant and it will be available in two body colour options – Amazing Silver and Brilliant Black. To recall, the Taiwanese company launched their flagship HTC U11 smartphone in May 2017 at a global launch event in Taiwan.
The company has also announced a pre-booking offer for the new HTC U11. As an incentive, those customers, who pre-book a HTC U11 will get a HTC flip-cover for free worth Rs. 1,999. Customer purchasing a HTC U11 by using a Standard Chartered Debit or Credit card will have an option to avail 10% cash back on the MOP value of the smartphone. The key highlights of the smartphone are its Edge Sense technology, Liquid surface design, HTC BoomSound Hi-Fi edition, and DxOMark rated camera.
HIGHLIGHT
The HTC U11 smartphone comes with the HTC’s Edge Sense technology that allows the users to squeeze the phone to give voice commands. The technology called Edge Sense, based on sensors built into the side of the device that responds to being squeezed. Unlike other touch-based smartphones, HTC Edge Sense technology works well when the phone is wet and if the user if wearing gloves and also supports voice dictation for messages. The Taiwanese tech giant has also become the first to include support for both the Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa smart virtual assistants. The another highlight of the HTC’s new addition of U series smartphones is Sense Companion, a company’s own AI personal assistant based system that learns the user’s daily patterns to provide usage recommendations and friendly advice. The HTC Sense Companion also uses machine learning (similar to the Google Assistant) to make the device more personal by adapting to user’s behaviour over the time.
DESIGN
In terms of design, the HTC U11 sports a 3D Liquid Surface design with metal frame all around and glossy back giving it a premium look. The new seamless, curved look of HTC U11 is achieved with 3D glass on both front and back. 3D glass screen designed for crisp, vivid images and text in any lighting condition – even in direct sunlight. The new HTC U11 also features a front-mounted fingerprint scanner, that is housed underneath the physical Home Button of the device. The volume rockers as well as the power/lock buttons are placed on the right-hand edge of the smartphones. The speaker grille is seen at the bottom edge of the handset along with a USB Type-C port sitting in the middle. The rear panel houses a 12MP rear camera setup with a dual-tone LED flash module, while the top front panel features a 16MP selfie camera and an earpiece.
HTC U11 Specifications and Features:
In terms of specifications, HTC U 11 comes equipped with a 5.5-inch Quad HD Super LCD display with a screen resolution of 1440×2560 pixels and a scratch resistance Corning Gorilla Glass 5 coating on top. The device is powered by a latest 64-bit 2.45GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 quad-core processor coupled with Adreno 540 GPU to handle the graphics. In terms of memory, the HTC U 11 is backed by 6GB of RAM and 128 GB of internal storage, which can be further expanded up to 2TB via a microSD card. Talking about its software fronts, the dual-SIM (Nano-SIM) HTC U 11 runs company’s proprietary HTC Sense 9.0 custom UI skin, based on Google’s latest Android 7.1.1 Nougat operating system.
In terms of optics, the HTC U 11 sports a 12-megapixel UltraPixel 3 rear-facing camera with 1.4-micron pixels, Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), an f/1.7 aperture, a BSI sensor, ultra-fast laser focus and new Phase Detection Auto Focus (PDAF), a dual-tone LED flash and slow-motion. The UltraPixel mode is four times more light sensitive than standard mode (best for low-light photos). Camera features also include Pro mode with manual control, Face Detection, RAW format support, 32-second long exposure, Panorama, HDR Boost, and Hyperlapse. The rear camera is capable of shooting videos in 4K resolution with 3D Audio support. On the front, HTC U 11 features a 16-megapixel camera with an f/2.0 aperture lens and BSI sensor. Selfie camera features include Live make-up, Auto Selfie, Selfie Panorama, Voice Selfie, HDR Boost, and full HD 1080p video recording support.
In terms of Connectivity, the HTC 11 supports dual SIM dual standby using the (nano-SIM + nano-SIM) slot. Connectivity options on the device also include 4G LTE, Bluetooth v4.2, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, GPS/A-GPS with GLONASS, Beidou, Miracast, DisplayPort, HTC Connect, NFC and USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C port for superfast charging and data transfer. HTC U 11 also comes with HTC U-Sonic feature, which allows it to analyse the shape of user’s inner ear with a “sonar-like pulse”. HTC USonic earbuds support HTC BoomSound Hi-Fi edition, active noise cancellation, 3D audio recording with four microphones, and Hi-res audio certified. The HTC U11 is a IP67 certified smartphone, that means the device is water and dust resistance.
Being a Type-C USB port based smartphone, HTC U Ultra doesn’t feature the standard 3.5mm headphone jack. With all these high-end specifications, the device is fuelled by a decent 3,000mAh non-removable battery and supports Quick Charge 3.0 for fast charging. The battery is rated to deliver up to 24.5 hours of talk time and lasts up to 14 days in standby mode. Sensors on the device include Proximity, Compass, Accelerometer, G-sensor, Gyroscope, Ambient light sensors and Fingerprint (front-mounted). The handset measures 153.9 x 75.9 x 7.9 mm and weighs 169 grams.
