HTC U 11 smartphone with ‘squeezable’ bezels launched

HTC has finally launched its flagship smartphone for 2017, the HTC U 11. The handset is the third in the ‘U’ family. The other two smartphones that have been launched in the same series are the U Ultra and the U Play. The HTC U 11 will be available in Amazing Silver, Sapphire Blue, Brilliant Black, Solar Red and Ice White colour variants.

HTC says the U 11 region-specific availability will commence next week and the full distribution will take place by June. It will come bundled with the USonic earbuds, 3.5mm to USB Type-C adapter and a smartphone clear case.

The HTC U 11 sports a ‘Liquid Surface’ design with mirror-like reflection. The handset’s unibody design includes a mix of glass and metal and looks a lot like the HTC U Ultra. The smartphone, as rumoured before, comes with a 5.5-inch QHD (2560×1440 pixels) LCD display with Corning Gorilla Glass coating. The screen is also operational using gloves.
Running HTC Edge Sense user interface, the smartphone comes with 8 sensors on the side bezels to register the squeeze. These sensors are integrated with the Edge Sense and can be customised to launch any app. There is a dedicated settings option to customise the particular feature.
The U 11 is powered by the octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. On the camera front, the device includes 12MP autofocus rear camera with f/1.7 aperture and Dual Pixel tech. The camera can record videos with 5-axis OIS and EIS technology for a stable shoot. It supports 4K video capturing with 360-degree surround sound recording using all the handset’s four microphones. Also talked about is the feature where the audio is focussed on the subject when zoomed. There is a 16MP front-facing camera with 16MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture. Besides the HTC Boomsound powered speaker, the smartphone comes with UFS 2.1 storage for better read and write speeds.