HTC U11 smartphone review: A return to form
Note: This article was first published on 25th June 2017.
Overview
It feels like almost every flagship smartphone in recent memory has had some kind of gimmick to help separate it from the crowd: the LG G6 and Samsung Galaxy S8 have ultra-tall screens, Motorola's Z Play has its modular accessories, Sony's XZ Premium can shoot video footage at 960FPS, and Huawei's P10 Plus has its Leica-branded double camera monochrome/RGB setup. Not to be left out, HTC's new U11 also has a unique trick: it's the first squeezable smartphone. Okay, let's be honest, that sounds pretty silly, but HTC really believes it's the next big breakthrough in smartphone interaction.
More importantly, HTC hasn't neglected the other parts of the phone - like the display, processor, audio and camera - with improvements in all of these key areas. The result is a surprisingly good smartphone, in fact it's probably the best device HTC has made in years.
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Design
The U11 shares the same design as the U Ultra and U Play, launched earlier this year. HTC calls this design "Liquid Surface Construction" and it's easy to see why. The entire back of the phone is ultra glossy, curved Gorilla Glass 3, with a reflective, mirror-like surface that looks almost like water. The glass itself is color treated during production, with layers of different colors added as the glass is being formed, resulting in a gorgeous color-shifting finish that reminds me of the custom paint jobs you sometimes see on high-end exotic cars. The only drawback to a finish like this is it's an absolute fingerprint and smudge magnet.
Sapphire Blue, Brilliant Black and Ice White, first seen on the U Ultra, all make a return, alongside two brand new shades: Amazing Silver and Solar Red. Our review unit is Amazing Silver, which looks silver in some angles, and light blue or purple in others. Solar Red has strong gold overtones - HTC likens it to the color of a sunset. Amazing Silver will launch with the phone in June, while Solar Red will be available at a later date.
HTC has also made a few improvements on the design from the U Ultra: the U11 is now IP67 dust and water resistant, meaning it can be fully submerged in 1m of water for up to 30 minutes. The ugly camera bump on the rear is gone too, the new rear camera is sleek and flush with the back of the phone.
The front of the phone isn't as exciting as the rear, as HTC has stuck to a 5.5-inch display with a familiar 16:9 aspect ratio, rather than the ultra wide-screen formats adopted by LG and Samsung. The bezels on the side of the phone are also quite thick and, unlike the U Ultra, the U11 doesn't have a secondary display above the main one.
Below the display, the oblong home button doubles up as a fingerprint scanner, and is flanked by capacitive Back and Recent keys. The fingerprint scanner is a little skinny for my liking, but it's responsive and works well. The capacitive navigation buttons are also a little on the small side and, as I mentioned in my U Ultra review, I wish they were centered properly - there's a massive amount of unused space above the home button and soft keys.
The power button and volume rocker are both found on the right side, while the combination nano-SIM and microSD card slot is found on top.
On the bottom of the phone there's a single USB-C port and that's it - like the U Ultra, the U11 doesn't have a 3.5mm headphone jack. The small slit next to the USB port that looks like a card slot is actually a uniquely-shaped speaker grille.
Display & Audio
While the bezel around the display could be a bit thinner, the screen itself is top-notch. The 5.5-inch Super LCD 5 panel has a QHD 2,560 x 1,440 pixels resolution (~540ppi) with great colors. As with most LCD panels, contrast isn't as good as Samsung's AMOLED panels, and at maximum brightness, it's not quite as bright either, but it's still bright enough to be used easily under direct sunlight. One drawback to the display is that, unlike most other flagship smartphones, it is not compatible with Mobile HDR content.
HTC phones have always had above average audio performance, and the U11 is no exception. The U11 sports HTC's BoomSound Hi-Fi edition speakers. Like the U Ultra and HTC 10, the stereo speakers use the earpiece speaker and a single downward-firing speaker on the bottom of the phone rather than two dedicated front-facing speakers like old HTC phones. Having said that, HTC tells us that the internal speaker design has been improved, with the entire body of the phone now acting as a resonant acoustic chamber, resulting in louder sound and deeper bass. Sound quality is excellent for a smartphone, and is noticeably louder and with more bass than the HTC U Ultra.
HTC also bundles a pair of its USB-C USonic earphones with the U11, which feature a built-in DAC, active noise cancelation and a custom feature that creates an optimized audio profile by scanning the inside of your ear canals. The earphones are quite good, and are easily superior to almost every other bundled earphones out there.
If you prefer to use your own headphones, thankfully, the U11 also comes supplied with a USB-C to 3.5mm jack dongle. According to HTC, this dongle actually has its own built-in performance-grade DAC, which should enhance your listening experience, no matter what headphones you plug into it. Personally, I didn't notice much of a difference, but your mileage may vary.
Finally, it's worth noting that the U11 continues HTC's support of Hi-Res Audio files, so you’ll be able to get the full experience from any music you throw on it.
Edge Sense
The U11's unique feature is Edge Sense, which is a combination of hardware and software that uses eight super-thin pressure sensitive strain gauges in the lower half of the frame (four on each side), to let you squeeze the U11 to register input.
There's haptic feedback vibration when you activate the feature and you can adjust the sensitivity if you prefer a firmer or lighter squeeze. Proximity sensors ensure that Edge Sense only activates when you're actually holding the phone, so a tight fitting pair of jeans squeezing the phone won't do anything.
Out of the box, Edge Sense will recognize one input - short squeeze. By default, this is used to quickly launch the front-facing camera when the display is off. When the camera is on, you can also squeeze the edge to take a picture. When users are more familiar with Edge Sense, they can activate Advanced Mode, which adds a second input - long squeeze or "Squeeze and Hold" as it's called in the settings menu. If you're in the camera app, by default, a long squeeze will flip the camera to the rear facing camera, but both short and long squeeze can be customized to launch any app.
Unfortunately, the only app that has built-in Edge Sense functionality is the default camera app, and personally, I preferred using the on screen shutter button or the volume key to take pictures anyway. You can technically squeeze just one side of the phone to take a picture, which HTC has been promoting as being "like a DSLR shutter button" but the problem with this is, the level of force you use to squeeze both sides of the phone in your hand, compared to just one finger pressing down on one side of the phone is completely different. You can't set different levels of squeeze for when you're launching and app and when you're already inside an app, so trying to exert enough force to trigger the shutter almost always causes camera shake.
Having said that, taking pictures with Edge Sense really seems built for selfies, where you would have a firm grip on both sides of the phone and can easily squeeze it, but because I'm not a teenage girl, I take very few of those.
With Edge Sense only working inside the default camera app, the rest of the time, it's basically just a glorified app launcher - that can only launch two apps at a time. Fortunately, HTC will soon be releasing an Edge Sense app that will let you use Edge Sense in any app. Once set up, Edge Sense will let you replicate a single or double tap at a specific position on the screen with short or long squeezes. You'll be able to customize where you want the tap to occur by indicating a position over the app's interface. So for example, you can set up Instagram so that every time you squeeze, Edge Sense will replicate a tap on the screen over the Instagram shutter button to take a picture. Or if you want to use it to zoom in on Google Maps you can set the tap point to somewhere in the middle of the screen. Of course, this is only useful if the app you're using repeatedly uses single or double taps in the same location. I could see it working for one button games like Temple Run, or any camera app with a shutter button, but it's not going to be useful in every app.
According to HTC, Edge Sense will work with a case, but you may have to squeeze harder to activate it. Soft cases, such as those made from leather or silicon, will work much better than tough hard cases. HTC also supplies a clear plastic case with the U11 that has the sides cut out, so it won't interfere with Edge Sense.
Software
The U11 runs on Android 7.1 Nougat with HTC's Sense UI 8 on top of it. It's a fairly restrained UI, and hasn't changed much since last year's HTC 10. There's not much bloatware, and the few apps HTC has installed are actually quite useful, including BlinkFeed, which offers a curated tile system showing news articles and social media updates it believes to be of interest. The feed is customizable and can be accessed by swiping left from the main homescreen. New to the U11 is Amazon Alexa support, making the U11 the only smartphone currently available with support for both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.
If that's not enough assistants for you, the U11 also features HTC's own Sense Companion. We first saw this on the U Ultra, and it works in much the same way here.
Like most AI assistants, you can voice activate Sense Companion thanks to four always listening microphones on the device. You can use your voice to set alarms and reminders for you, and you can also dismiss or snooze alarms the same way. Unlike other AI assistants, Sense Companion doesn't talk back to you, instead it provides updates and notifications exclusively through an "Edge Bubble", which is essentially just a pop-up in the corner of the screen. Tap on it to read the details, or swipe it away to dismiss it. In most cases, this is fine, but if you're unable to read your smartphone display - for example, when you're driving - you really want your AI assistant to talk to you instead.
Sense Companion does most of the things other AI assistants like Google Assistant will do, like notifying you about your schedule by reading your calendar, or alerting you that it might rain tomorrow. It also incorporates machine-learning that tracks your activity and behavior and can send you notifications based on that. For example, if it notices that you frequently run out of battery during the evening, it will remind you to charge the device during the day.
Performance Benchmarks
The HTC U11 runs on Qualcomm's flagship octa-core Snapdragon 835 processor, paired with 6GB RAM. On paper this makes it the most powerful Qualcomm-powered smartphone currently available.
The Snapdragon 835 is Qualcomm's first 10nm processor, with the U11 using the default clock speed 4 x 2.45GHz "big" cores, and 4 x 1.9Ghz "little" cores setup. The U11 also sports the new Adreno 540 GPU that Qualcomm claims is 25 percent more powerful than its predecessor in 3D performance.
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Sunspider Javascript
SunSpider JavaScript measures the browsing performance of a device when processing JavaScript. It not only takes into consideration the underlying hardware performance, but also assesses how optimized a particular platform is at delivering a high-speed web browsing experience.
The U11 showed great improvements over the 821-powered U Ultra, and trailed only Samsung's Galaxy S8. In actual usage, the U11's browsing performance was snappy and responsive.
Quadrant
Quadrant is an Android benchmark that evaluates a device's CPU, memory, I/O and 3D graphics performances. Take this benchmark with a grain of salt, because both the U11 and XZ Premium massively underperformed here. We suspect one aspect of the Quadrant benchmark is incompatible with the Snapdragon 835 and causing these results.
3DMark Sling Shot
3DMark Sling Shot is an advanced 3D graphics benchmark that tests the full range of OpenGL ES 3.1 and ES 3.0 API features including multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers and transform feedback. The test also includes impressive volumetric lighting and post-processing effects. We're running this benchmark in Unlimited mode, which ignores screen resolutions.
This was the U11's best benchmark by far, as it absolutely destroyed the competition. Compared to the similarly 835-equipped Sony XZ Premium, the U11's extra 2GB RAM seems to have really helped in this graphics intensive benchmark.
Imaging
The U11 sports a brand new rear camera. The 12-megapixel, f/1.7 shooter boasts a 1.4μm pixel size, optical image stabilization and HTC's UltraPixel 3 technology. It also has UltraSpeed AF and improved HDR. HTC's previous UltraPixel cameras have had a tendency to overexpose shots, but fortunately HTC seems to have fixed that for the U11, which consistently takes great photos with spot-on color reproduction, good contrast, and sharp focus across the image. Auto-focus is speedy and accurate, and the wide f/1.7 aperture gives it great low light performance.
The front camera is a 16-megapixel, f/2.0 shooter with UltraPixel technology. Unfortunately, unlike the HTC 10 it does not have optical image stabilization.
Video recording on the U11 is also quite good. The U11 can record 4K video in 30FPS, or Full HD at up to 120FPS. The U11 is one of the first phones to benefit from Qualcomm's EIS (electronic image stabilization) 3.0 tech, which reduces camera shake when shooting footage. It uses a new algorithm that better understands how the phone is moving and corrects the image quickly. This feature was previously exclusive to the LG V20. To complement video footage, the U11 can also capture stereo 3D sound thanks to its four-microphone array. There's even an interesting trick called Acoustic Focus that lets you zoom in on a sound source, isolating it, and reducing background noise.
Battery Life
Our standard battery test for mobile phones has the following parameters:
Looping a 720p video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
Constant data streaming through email and Twitter
The U11 is powered by a 3,000mAh capacity non-removable battery, which is slightly on the small side for a 5.5-inch QHD display. Nevertheless, it performed fairly well in our video looping benchmark, lasting just four minutes short of nine hours.
Strangely enough, while the U11 runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835, it uses QuickCharge 3.0, not the newer QuickCharge 4.0. Nevertheless, QuickCharge 3.0 is still very effective, and will give the U11 about 60 percent charge in just 30 minutes.
Conclusion
HTC may be pushing Edge Sense as the next big thing in smartphones but honestly it's probably the least interesting feature in the U11 - at least for now. Without app customization, Edge Sense is basically just an overbuilt app launcher that can only launch two apps. While you can use it to take pictures in the default camera app, I found it more convenient to just press the onscreen shutter button or volume button to take a picture. Once HTC launches full app customization, that may change, but for now Edge Sense isn't all that useful.
Having said that, you can completely ignore Edge Sense, because the rest of the U11 is actually really good. In fact, it makes me wish HTC had simply declined to participate in the gimmick wars and gone with a fully traditional smartphone. In a sea of minimalist monochrome designs, the flashy color-shifting U11 colors are a breath of fresh air, so if you're the type who likes to stand out a bit, this is definitely a phone you should be considering. Benchmark performance is also excellent, battery life is reasonably good, and the U11's display is top notch too - although I do wish it had Mobile HDR support. Audio, both from the BoomSound speakers, and the bundled USonic earphones are amongst the best out there (and if you want to use your own headphones, at least you now have the option to, thanks to the included 3.5mm adaptor). At S$998, the U11 is currently the most affordable Snapdragon 835 powered smartphone out there (at least until the OnePlus 5 launches), and its 6GB RAM also makes it more powerful than the other 835-powered model out there, the Sony XZ Premium, which costs S$100 more.
All things considered, while the U11 may not have the forward-facing features of some of its competition, it delivers a strong performance in all of the traditional areas you actually care about.
