HTC U11 Revisited: HTC Joins Google! By Tim Schofield

Hammer one Tim Schofield here I've got the HTC. U 11 right here and it's been out for quite a bit of time, but I want to go ahead and revisit this device and also talk about something. That's been in the news lately with HTC, because a lot of people have come up to me and said: hey I heard Google bought HDC done for all that stuff and that's actually not true. So what happened is that Google is buying part of the HTC Smartphone team for 1.1 billion dollars. So what does Google actually get out of that? If Cede's still separate Google doesn't get any factories or anything like that? Google is actually going to get about 2,000 employees from HTC and their smartphone division and I. Think that is due to how Google is really investing a ton into their hardware sector in terms of showing that off with their latest event, but pixel oven.

They have tons of new hardware products now. Well the HTC you 11b. If she sees the last smartphone I highly doubt if they've been completely dissed male HTC. However, Google doesn't only just get the 2,000 employees from HTC; they also have access to each DC's intellectual property and patents. So that's kind of I think another big thing that people can overlooked is that they're not only getting some employees but also access to their IP, now HCC's already having an impact on Google's devices such as the pixel 2, with that squeeze function that came on the UHF, and I'll talk about that in just a second and, of course, as you can tell I kind of, had a bit of an accident on my U 11, but let's go ahead and revisit this device so to begin the HTC 11, just like the slipperiest phone I've used.

However, that doesn't excuse what I have done to the back of this device. Just look at that damage, however, with the solar red variant. I, do have to say this. Probably the best-looking damaged phone that I've ever seen almost gives it a bit of a mosaic look. But yes, it happened, I actually listen to music and the shower believe it or not, and I set this on top of the toilet part, and it does have a bit of a curve to the back here, and it is a little slick.

So what happened was it was laying down flat like this and just slowly slid off, crashed on the tile floor in the bathroom shadowed, the back. Luckily, the phone spine works perfectly no damage to the camera. Anything just the back got shattered. To be completely honest. The u11 by HTC is a bit of a sleeper for one of the better phones in 2017.

However, it has been overshadowed by other flagships around the same price point with better designs, and that is shown off with the bezels on the u11, so this phone came out, and then the SI completely overshadowed it bezel wise and same with the LG G 6 as well. Those phones all came out at about the same time and clearly the other two companies went with a bit of a better design option in terms of aesthetics. Now, functionality wise some people still do like the capacitive buttons down at the bottom. You go through recent apps, a home button on the bottom. Now this fingerprint scanner I've noticed over time I find that it's just a little too small.

You need to be very precise with where you put your thumb, it's just a little too narrow and small for my liking. However, that's just a little of a nitpick thing, because over time, I find that I can be very precise, there's just times when I might miss it on accident. Overall, the U 11 is one of the better multimedia devices out there. It has a bottom firing speaker along with stereo speaker with the earpiece as well, so you have two speakers firing audio, which is always great you'll notice, there's no headphone jack down at the bottom to top absolutely no headphone jack, it does come with an adapter. So that's a bit unfortunate.

Some people don't care. Some people do. However, the DAX very good, sound quality when using headphones is great using the included headphones as well. They do include headphones, which are USB type-c headphones, which is always nice over time. I'm, really not noticing any slowdowns and performance everything's been great.

It does have flagship specs that you come to expect from all the other devices out there right now. It doesn't see sense skin over it. So it's a little different I think they do need to revamp it a little and make it a little more aesthetically pleasing I, pretty much, never use this page over here, that's on the home screen, and it doesn't have the swipe up function to get to your after, like stock Android does, however, jumping into settings still very similar to that stock. Android feel in terms of battery life I'm still very impressed with it. You've seen I struggle with taking a screenshot with volume down or based on these squeeze dots showing up, but anyways time on almost five hours screen on time.

Let's go through four hours, 42 minutes, and then this one is for hours in nine minutes over 17 percent battery life, so I do get through a full day fairly easily. So I've been very impressed with you Elevens battery. Now the camera on the u11 has been very good when it comes to low-light it's just okay, it's not as great as I'd like it to be. This would be at a Chicago Fire game lighting wasn't optimal, but it still got a pretty good shot. This is when I visited New York as well.

I see very good when it comes to bright light scenarios. It just kind of struggles just a little when the lighting starts to go a little dimmer, which kind of sets it apart from that of the s8 and the g6. Now for the feature that is on the pics upcoming pixel ?, that would be squeezed the device, and it activates an action. I'm a little worried about how customizable it will be on the pixel ? we'll see. I will update you on that, but here it is edge sense on the U, 11, and you'll see you can enable advanced mode where you can customize not only a short squeeze, but a long squeeze and, of course, the force level as well now you'll see voice-to-text I have them on both.

So if I want to switch that to short squeeze I can have it HTC Alexa launched any specific apps screenshot flashlight. Let's do a flashlight real quick just to give you an example of customizing it so now, I'm going to go home and quickly squeeze it flashlight on quickly squeeze it flashlight off now, I'm gonna squeeze and hold, and there goes that Google assistance so awesome that you can really customize it and I really hope that happens in the pixel ? I honestly think you can either it will be. You either turn on the Google Assistant squeezer. You turn it off, I'm, not sure, but personally I like the squeeze function, that's just a personal preference of mine. Furthermore, you may not I'm looking forward to it on the pixel -.

That's just about everything. I did want to cover with the 11 all the Google stuff, that it's not Android 7.1.1 at the moment, so no updates or you, yet I will keep you updated, though. If that does come and also do a video on it as well on the HTC. U 11 so hopefully enjoyed this video and seeing the massacre of the U 11. That I have in my hand, right now, so hope you enjoyed it.

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Source : Tim Schofield