Review: HTC U11

The U Ultra is the latest phablet from HTC. It aims to entice buyers away from the Huawei P10 Plus, and to fill the gap left by the Galaxy Note 7, by offering users a variety of unusual features.

The two most noteworthy are the addition of a secondary screen on the phone’s top, as well as a new Sense AI feature that will let the phone learn your usage habits and automatically take actions on your behalf.

The features are interesting, but sadly the U Ultra ultimately fails to fully deliver because it doesn't get basic things right, such as battery life and camera performance.

HTC U ULTRA – DESIGN

HTC is a company that prides itself on design and its flagship metal One-series smartphones have, in my opinion, always been beautiful devices. That's why I’m a little disappointed by the U Ultra, which feels like the ugly duckling of HTC’s line.

HTC’s ditched the full-metal frame design it's famous for and opted for a glass back. This would be fine if the glass had the classy feel of that on the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, but it doesn’t. The back feels more like plastic than glass and is an outright smudge magnet. It also feels a little flimsy and there’s a noticeable amount of flex when you press on it with even moderate force. This isn't a handset I’d expect to survive any serious accidental drop or bump.

I’m also not impressed that HTC’s once again not loaded the phone with a headphone jack – a move that will force buyers to invest in wireless headphones or rely on the USB-C set included in the U Ultra’s box. It’s a small quibble, but as someone who regularly listens to music using a wired set while charging my phone, the lack of a 3.5mm jack is an annoyance.

The omission of a microSD slot is another minor annoyance, though personally I imagine the 64GB seen on the basic Gorilla Glass model and 128GB of internal space on the flashier Sapphire Crystal version will be more than enough for most users.

These issues aside, in hand the device isn’t terrible. Though the back does rapidly become slippery when wet – an issue in rainy Britain – the U Ultra’s 8mm thickness and 170g weight make it comfortable to hold and skinny jean-friendly, despite the dimensions necessary for that 5.7-inch screen.

The front-facing fingerprint scanner also performs admirably and proved consistently reliable throughout testing; although like all fingerprint readers, it doesn’t work particularly well in the rain.

HTC U ULTRA – DISPLAY

The U Ultra’s dual-screen setup is one of its headline features. The system works in a similar way to the twin-display setup seen on the LG V10 and V20 and places a secondary 2-inch screen over the U Ultra’s primary 5.7-inch 1440p panel.

The display will show notifications and shortcuts for things like apps and contacts. It’ll also occasionally pop up application-specific controls for things like Music, which is pretty useful. The ability to customise it to offer quick shortcuts to contacts and applications is also a nice touch, although the U Ultra’s phablet dimensions make reaching the top screen a bit of a challenge for people with small hands.

The primary display is also pretty good. The 1440p resolution ensures text and icons look uniformly sharp. The Super LCD 5 panel also offers reasonably realistic-looking colours that don’t look too cool or too warm. Blacks aren’t the inkiest I’ve seen, especially when compared to AMOLED panels, but they’re far from terrible.

My only criticisms are that whites aren’t quite as clean as I’d like on a phone in this price bracket and the screen’s maximum brightness is a little low. Whites aren’t terrible, but they have a grey/reddish tinge that becomes particularly noticeable when viewing the display at even a moderate angle.

The phone’s brightness is up to scratch for use indoors, but the low maximum becomes evident the moment you try and use it in brightly lit areas. In areas with bright lamps, and in the outdoors, the phone rapidly becomes reflective and hard to use, even with the brightness cranked. This isn’t helped by the auto-brightness setting's sluggish response time.
HTC U ULTRA – SOFTWARE

The U Ultra’s software is one of its greatest strengths. The handset runs usingAndroid Nougat and HTC’s nifty Sense skin.

The inclusion of Nougat is always a welcome sight on any smartphone. The OS is the best version of Android to date and brings a wealth of useful features and under the hood upgrades. The best of these include improved battery-saving 'Doze' powers, better multi-process support and an improved UI and notifications system.

However, I’m not usually a fan of Android skins, which have a tendency to add bloatware and delay how quickly handsets can be upgraded to new versions of the OS, like the final version of the newly unveiled Android O developer preview.

Related: Best Phablets

The latter issue still exists with Sense, but my primary pet peeve doesn’t apply here. For the last couple of years HTC sensibly opted not to install any duplicate applications onto its phones. So unlike on competing skinned devices, such as theHuawei P10, LG G6 and Samsung Galaxy S7, you won’t see multiple music, photos, calendar and marketplace apps on the U Ultra.

The services HTC’s added are also for the most part useful. I’ve long been a fan of the company’s Blinkfeed service, for example. The app can be accessed by swiping left from the main home screen and offers a curated tile system showing news articles and updates it thinks are of interest. The feed is customisable and remains a great way to catch up on the morning headlines on the commute into work.

I’m a little less enamoured by the U Ultra’s Sense Companion service. Sense Companion is a feature that aims to offer recommendations on things like nearby restaurants it thinks you’ll like, or upcoming events based on the U Ultra owner’s user habits.

The feature sounds cool, but with Google working to offer similar services with its Assistant, it seems a little redundant. I’d have preferred it if HTC had opted to use Google’s version, which given the latter company’s background in data analytics and machine learning will inevitably be better supported.

HTC U ULTRA – PERFORMANCE

HTC’s loaded the U Ultra with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor and 4GB of RAM, which is pretty par for the course on a flagship smartphone these days. With Qualcomm’s new 835 CPU set to arrive in the very near future on Samsung’s Galaxy S8, the 821’s time in the sun is running out, however.

For now, though, the U Ultra’s CPU and memory configuration is more than good enough and lets the phone speed through everything from web browsing to intensive 3D gaming.

My real-world impressions rang true when I ran the U Ultra through our standard suite of synthetic benchmarks.

On the generalist AnTuTu benchmark the U Ultra scored an impressive 138,168 which is one of the best performances I’ve seen on a current-generation smartphone. Its Geekbench 4 1716 single-core and 4101 multi-core scores are also fairly impressive. The Galaxy S7 scored 122,765 on AnTuTu and ran in with 1187 single-core and 3675 multi-core scores on Geekbench, by comparison.

They do, however, still put the U Ultra behind the projected performance stats of the incoming wave of 835-powered handsets, such as the previously mentioned Samsung Galaxy S8. An 835 Qualcomm reference device we benchmarked earlier this year scored 181,833 on AnTuTu.

The phone’s speakers are also fairly impressive. Though they don’t have the oomph to comfortably listen to music on, they're more than loud and clear enough for taking calls on speaker phone. The mic is also capable and I never struggled to make or take calls when using the phone out and about on London’s noisy streets.

HTC U ULTRA – CAMERA

The U Ultra comes with an OIS-equipped 12-UltraPixel sensor on its back, and on its front is a 16-megapixel selfie shooter, with an UltraPixel mode for lower light and auto-HDR.

I’ve never been a huge fan of HTC’s UltraPixel tech as it has been a little hit-and-miss in the past. UltraPixel is a marketing term for some imaging tech that HTC began peddling at the launch of the original One smartphone.

HTC claims it lets its phone cameras capture up to 300% more light by using larger pixels than regular cameras. The tech in theory means an UltraPixel camera can shoot photos, apply filters and share images faster because it’s taking in less data.

All this sounds great, but in the past I’ve found it’s not all so rosy and the feature can lead to some oddities when taking photos. Sadly this remains the case on the U Ultra.

The rear camera’s f/1.8,aperture and the inclusion of OIS are also, on paper, great and the unit works well in regular light, but it has a tendency to overexpose photos.

Low-light performance is also slightly disappointing. In dark conditions the camera lags, with a noticeable delay from when you press the on-screen shutter button and the photo actually being taken.
HTC U ULTRA – BATTERY

Battery life is another area the HTC U Ultra falls flat. Despite this being a giant phone, HTC’s only loaded it with a 3000mAh battery, which simply isn’t large enough for a phablet – even with Android Nougat’s vast array of power-saving features.

Using the U Ultra as my main work and personal phone, I had to charge it every day with regular use. This entailed taking and making a few calls throughout the day, playing a couple of YouTube videos, listening to music on my morning and evening commutes, and constantly checking my email and social media feeds.

More intensive tasks put an even bigger drain on the U Ultra’s battery. The phone lost an average of 15-18% of its charge streaming video with the screen locked at 50% brightness, which is sub-par. The U Ultra oozed out charge when playing demanding games and lost as much as 25-30% of its charge playing Riptide GP2 and Banner Saga.

Luckily, standby times are still solid thanks to Android’s Doze feature. Doze is a cool feature that intelligently shuts down non-critical processes when the phone isn’t used for prolonged periods of time. Its appearance means the U Ultra lost at most 3% of its charge when left unplugged overnight.

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