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Whatever you're about to read is solely and wholly the personal opinion of the writer and does not reflect the thoughts of the AC volunteers team, editors and Android Central as a whole.
View attachment 260227So, the HTC U11 is now official, and it seems to confirm whatever leaked out not too long ago, featuring the same glossy design from the U Ultra and U Play, along with the expected top-tier internal hardware, along with the lack of a headphone jack in favor of USonic and HTC's new Edge Sense feature.
Personally, I think the HTC U11 is a very solid device. I still don't think USonic is
that good to justify replacing a ubiquitous open standard with something that's a little more proprietary and while Edge Sense is neat, I personally feel that it would have been more useful if HTC also added stuff more akin to the Nokia McLaren, where the phone can sense the way it is held and uses that info to improve the device's core functionality, such as making auto-rotate more reliable by detecting the way you're holding the device. Aside from the 2 sore points, I think HTC made a solid device that quite a number of people would be happy to own.
Sadly, that
number isn't a lot of people in the general sense.
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I think it's pretty clear that HTC's situation is still quite dire. The company's start to 2017 was pretty bad, with the U Ultra receiving no more than a lukewarm reception owing to its high price and was also cited as an example of "poor use of space" by YouTuber Marques Brownlee, which went viral pretty quickly. Its smaller cousin, the U Play, also didn't receive a welcoming reception, which perhaps led to the company's revenues dropping 9.3% compared to the same quarter last year.
While the U11 doesn't solve all of the flops the U Ultra had, the phone does at least make up for some of that by utilizing a more efficient processor, which coupled with the slightly smaller display and lack of a secondary ticker should make for solid battery life, along with an improved camera with a similar image sensor to the Galaxy S8 along with improved audio recording, which takes advantage of the device's microphones to enable 360-degree audio recording.
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The biggest sin that the U11 solves, however, is the price. Unlike the U Ultra, which sold for an exorbitant $750, the U11 retails for $649 on HTC's store as an unlocked device, and if you get the $50 coupon, it drops to $599, making it a much better value proposition than HTC's bigger phone at launch.
So you might be asking,
why did I put such a title? Sadly, even if HTC gets the price logically right, people will still flock over to buy the equivalent Samsung or Apple flagship, or maybe even LG's G6 despite the older hardware.
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I could say that perhaps the larger bezels on the HTC U11 would make it look dated in comparison to the S8 or G6, which both have slimmer bezels, or maybe that the inclusion of the headphone jack on both devices would make them more appealing, but honestly, I don't think those are the prime reasons. Really, the prime reason is
carrier support.
The aforementioned devices sans the U11 are sold on most, if not all of the major carriers in the USA. However, the U11 is only available on Sprint or Verizon as a carrier or unlocked, with AT&T and T-Mobile left out in terms of carrier deals (though unlocked versions will work). That's really the problem here as many folks in the US buy their phones from a carrier, usually as part of a monthly payment plan and/or as part of an upgrade program such as T-Mobile JUMP!. I think that's the biggest hurdle for the HTC U11, at least in the United States. Being unable to leverage deals on all major US networks is quite a setback.
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Perhaps HTC is able to carve a niche for themselves not unlike OnePlus with the 3 and 3T, something which I do hope happens. But in terms of targeting the mainstream, I think the U11, as solid as it is, won't make much of a difference to HTC's bottom line. I do hope that I am wrong, but lately, it seems to be a vicious cycle.
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