Should you care about the HTC U11? - Hands-On Review By CJ Ying

G'day guys have the going. My name is CJ when it comes to smartphones. We quite often get caught up with certain features that make them stand out.2017 has been the year of the business phone.2016 was the year of waterproofing and 2015 was all about industrial design, but we're reaching a point in the lifecycle of smartphones where people now choose smartphones, not only because of any singular feature or specifications, but more about what the experience is like and how it can actually improve our lives. So I've been using a phone for the last couple of weeks. That does this really well. The phone that I'm talking about is, of course, the HTC.

U 11 better late than never, but let's take a look, so HTC's been through a couple of rough years. Recently after such a promising start, they then stagnated with a bunch of lethargic releases, for example the HTC One m8, with its really weak camera, the HTC One m9, which you didn't really know what it was good at HTC 10, which was alright, and then it took a step back by reintroducing physical hardware keys. But now we've got the new 11, and it's a promising sign that HTC perhaps is starting to turn it around. So first, let's start talking about the design. Despite still sporting physical hardware, navigation keys, the U 11 is decidedly striking sporting, the same glass manufacturing techniques that they adopted in the u altar the new 11 looks amazing, depending on the angle that you're looking at the phone, the phone almost changes color right before your eyes, and it really is a head turner, especially this solar red version that I've got here.

It almost shined a golden color in certain angles. Now, if there was ever a phone that would match Iron man suit, it's probably this one right here. One massive caveat, though, with this glass design is that it's a massive fingerprint magnet, something that, let's be honest, no glass back phone can really avoid, and that includes the galaxy s 8, the iPhone 8. U 11 has a really nice heft, and it feels perfect in the hand. The slight curvature of the glass on the back almost melts into the aluminum frame to provide a really well handling device.

The buttons are solid, it has a really nice tactile, feel to it and then on the bottom, you'll notice that there's a microphone USB, C port and a down firing speaker and unfortunately, if you keep looking around the aluminum frame, you're not going to find a headphone jack, because it's gone then moving on to the front, and it's kind of bizarre, because it kind of looks like there's a really thick pane of glass on the front. But this is due to the fact that HTC has really given a nice curve to the glass in order to improve economics. Now keeping with the theme of thickness, as you could probably tell, the U 11 is bezels galore, which completely goes against the trends of 2017. It's got a body to screen ratio reminiscent of the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 plus, but at least in the earpiece it houses a nicely sized driver too. Does a tweeter to provide stereo sound, and the speakers combined are excellent.

The sound it pushes is crisp. Detailed, has punchy bass, and it gets plenty loud without any distortion. And then you have the screen itself, which is a 5.5 inch, IPS LCD it rocks a quad HD resolution and with great viewing angles and color accuracy, its no OLED display, obviously, but it's still a great display nonetheless, and then powering the phone aspects that you'd probably expect in any 2017 flagship phone. It's got a snapdragon 835 and your choice of between 4 and 6 gigabytes of RAM, depending on the market and the model that you choose, and that also includes a choice between single sim or dual sim model. It also comes in micros expansion, so you're not going to be wanting for space and then thanks to a massively turn down Sense UI we've got one of the smoothest and fastest iterations of Android that I've ever seen outside the Google Pixel in the OnePlus.5 animations are smooth fluid and there literally is no hint of any lag, but even then I'm still not a big fan of Sense UI. The UI elements have really been toned down over the years, but something about it just doesn't look quite right, but then it's nothing.

A third-party launch, I can't fix. So, after a little of tweaking, what you've got then is the closest you'll ever have to having an HTC pixel outside actually buying the pixel to itself. It even comes with his own AI assistant, which I wouldn't bother at this point. It just ended up being an obnoxious distraction and I disabled it pretty quickly, and then speaking of the pixel, to one of the main features that they introduced during the keynote presentation was its new active edge feature where you can squeeze the phone to activate the Google Assistant turns out. This feature isn't exactly unique, and it was actually first introduced as part of the U 11 under the guise of edge sense and there's a little more customization to boot, which makes it a little more useful than the one on the Google Pixel.

You can set two different squeezed pressures to trigger two different functions in my case, I've got up to trigger the camera and then also at the Google Assistant and in a bid to make it even more useful. You can further customize individual functions inside separate apps themselves to make them more useful. So, for example, you can have Instagram open, give your phone a squeeze, and it'll take a photo so then, moving on it carries a modestly sized 3000 William hour battery, which isn't exactly groundbreaking in terms of 2017 flagships. But the software optimization, combined with HTC's own boost plus optimization features means I'm still able to get around four and a half to five hours of screen on time and to make it even more simple. I can reach the end of the day with about 20 to 30% of battery life left even with fairly heavy use.

So if you live low on juice during the day, you'll be glad to know that HTC included quick charge 3.0 into the phone, and so they say you can get around 50% of power following 30 minutes of charge. Now I'm not convinced that it's actually that fast, and it's definitely not as fast as one plus is ? charging, but it's still really quick. Nonetheless, moving on to the best and for most people, the most important feature of any flagship, smartphone, the camera, it sports, a brilliant 12, megapixel single lens sensor that scored 90 on DXO mark, which at the time was the highest-scoring phone, at least for a little while until the Galaxy Note 8 and the iPhone 8 came around. That being said, we know that DXO mark doesn't necessarily reflect real-life usage. However, the numbers do give you a bit of an idea of how well it's going to perform and in the u Elevens case, it performs really well the dual pixel AF works really well and accurately, and then the large F 1.7 aperture, with optical image stabilization means it produced some of the best low-light photos that I've seen in any phone in 2017 I recently took it on a trip to Tasmania, and I was blown away by the performance. Dynamic range was excellent, Sharma's was on point and noise was really well controlled and none of the photo showed any smartphone telltale signs of any over processing that some other manufacturers are guilty of like Samsung and LG, and then we have video, and obviously it shoots in 4k and quality was on point now.

It doesn't have the same robust manual control features as we'd say in the LGA 30 video quality was clean and smooth, and actually straight out of the phone. It's some of the best that I've seen in any smartphone today. The acoustic focus is also a nifty little feature, though I did find much use for it, but it would be useful in people who have friends or family who are performers, and they want to go and record their performances and come back with the best audio quality possible. And then we've got the selfie camera which doesn't disappoint. It rocks a 16 megapixel sensor with an F 2.0 aperture lens. What we end up with a supremely sharp and detailed selfies, even in low-light we're still retaining a decent amount of detail and the photo still come out looking clean.

Overall I've got no qualms saying that the U 11 has one of the best smartphone cameras that we've seen in any phone in 2017 and that's even compared to the big boys like Samsung, Apple, LG and Google themselves. So what we have, then, is a phone that just excels at being a smartphone in a world where design quite often overlooks the user experience that you 11 does almost the exact opposite by melting away into the background and focusing on the user experience. So should you care about this phone? Well, we're almost seeing the creation of a new category within the smartphone market. To give an example, we've got cars, typical cars, and then we've got supercars like your Ferraris, the McLaren's, Lamborghini's and I. Think what we're seeing is the creation of the supercar category within the smartphones and I think this is where the iPhone 10 the Google Pixel to excel the Galaxy Note age.

This kind of phones will sit in the HTC 211. What we've got is a typical car, but with a few more premium features and a bit more premium feel to it. So you can probably compare it to a car like a Mercedes c-class or a BMW 3-series. It's got performance to match and one of the best cameras in any smartphone in 2017, and it's also got a relatively fair price. So, if you're thinking of buying a flagship smartphone but don't really have the budget to buy something like the iPhone 10, then take a look at the HTC.

U 11, you really can't go wrong anyway. What do you guys think? Do you like this phone? Do this phone is where third or do you think this phone is just a complete waste of money, and you should go for something else instead, let me know in the comment section below, as always. Thank you so much for watching this video. If you enjoy what you saw, give us a like, as it really helps the channel and if you haven't already do consider, subscribing thanks again for watching this video and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. Take it anyone for me, Cheers.

Source : CJ Ying