HTC U11 mobile phone- Everything that you wish to know about this mobile
HTC U11 is the new beautiful designed phone with lots of outstanding features. The U11 is packed full of high technology, with quality components inside an eye-catching glass finish. This is the first phone in the Australian market to come with Qualcomm and the Snapdragon 835 paired up with a generous 4GB of RAM, in a 5.5” Super LCD QHD display with a 3,000 mAh battery. Priced at $999 at the time of writing, on-contract at Telstra and Optus, also Virgin Mobile, here find what all you wish to know about this new smartphone.
Display and the Design
The first thing you’ll see of this phone is the company’s Liquid Surface glass rear, which made its debut on the earlier U Ultra and U Play. In the black and silver finishes available to Australia you’ll see an amazing reflection of your surrounds, with a playful shift in the light to bring about a finish that’s hard to take your eye off. Liquid Surface is the ultimate fingerprint magnet, but HTC ships a basic case in the box to protect the rear surface while still showing it off
HTC’s made the lower left and right edges of the phone pressure sensitive, so you can squeeze the sides of the phone to carry out configurable actions. Edge Sense is HTC’s shot at doing something different with the edges of your phone, without compromising them by turning them into an extra bit of screen space or making the side bezels unnecessarily thin.
Camera
The U11’s rear camera packs a 12MP 4:3 punch with a great wide angle lens for taking in the world around you. If you want to shoot in 16:9 that’ll come down to 9MP with a slightly narrower view, but that’s pretty standard these days. Switching aspect ratios is easy enough with a swipe and a tap.
It’s quietly branded an UltraPixel 3 camera, and HDR Boost delivers some fantastic grading in bright and low light environments. The camera’s got some impressive low light chops, with an f-stop of 1.7, large pixels and even features optical image stabilisation.
One of the best things about the U11’s camera is that it delivers a clear image that’s packed with detail and stands up to a closer inspection. Pro mode offers control over ISO, shutter speed, exposure, white balance and focus and the ability to save some presets.
Shooting in Pro mode saves both RAW and JPG, and the U11 ships with a “RAW Enhancement” tool that tries to turn your sensor’s data into a great photo. This dual saving mode also results in two images going into Google Photos for every shot you take.
Audio – BoomSound Hi-Fi Edition
The U11 features what must be the loudest speaker on a smartphone. It’s gunning to replace your Bluetooth speaker with big, clear sound that impresses despite the fact that it’s coming out of a phone. This is BoomSound Hi-Fi Edition with a powerful woofer in the base of the phone, and the earpiece is a tweeter. HTC says they’re using the phone’s own body to enhance the phone’s audio performance.The HTC U11 also forgoes the 3.5mm headphone jack – choosing instead to rely on the USB Type-C connection and the new HTC USonic earbuds that’ll come bundled with the phone. Sure, it’s a small consolation, but this new version features active noise cancellation courtesy of the HTC U11’s audio processing and an additional mic in the ear buds. There’s also one touch calibration for fine-tuning your audio profile.
Phone adapter, battery and other features
Phone comes with the USB-C / 3.5mm adapter. U11’s ability to last the distance with its 3,000 mAh battery and 5.5” QHD screen. HTC does ship the U11 with a “Boost” app that’s designed to clean up storage and optimise battery performance There are no surprises on the connectivity front. Wifi, Bluetooth and NFC are all present and accounted for, and the U11 finds and connects to my home network faster than most phones. There’s also blazing fast Cat16 4G LTE on offer, should your network support it.
The U11 is one of the first phones running Android 7.1.1 out of the box, with an update commitment from HTC to Android O when it’s released later this year. There’s also a commitment from HTC to keep pace with Google’s monthly security patches.
The thing with HTC’s 2017 vision of Android is, it’s not that different from Google’s own. It comes with HTC’s own launcher and theme store, it has a few tweaks to the Settings page layout and there’s HTC customisation to lock-screen behaviour to expose features like BlinkFeed, which now exposes you to its parent News Republic service after you’ve used it for a little while. There’s also no Pixel-like “ambient” display as notifications come in, and you need to actually turn the screen on with the power button, a double tap to wake, or a fingerprint scan if you’re going to see the time.
If you now seem interesting in buying this phone then head to HTC online store or get one from Telstra, Optus , Virgin Mobile, Harvey Norman and JB hi fi.