- So the HTC U11 is legit.
I know this because I've said so.
But here's the thing:
that wasn't always a given, right.
The last couple years have been
kind of tough on HTC.
The M10 just--
It was kind of a non-starter.
The M9?
That camera was not good.
And now we have a new phone and a new, weird name.
This is the HTC U11
and this is why you're going to want it.
(upbeat music)
So, first, ignore anything you've read or heard
about being squeeze this phone to do things.
Yes, you can, and yes it will, but you don't have to.
Yeah, it's a gimmick,
but for me, it doesn't change a single thing
about why this phone is so good.
You can use it if you want to launch different actions,
and that's fine and you can and I'm not.
No, start in the back, and just how gorgeous this thing is.
Look at the mirror finish.
It's beautiful no matter which color
you end up getting.
You know, the mirror finish is so good
I don't even care about the fingerprints
and tiny little scratches that have shown up on this one.
It looks beautiful.
For the front, yeah, it's a big black slab
of a smart phone.
Nothing we haven't seen before.
So the front's also where I run into
really my biggest complaint about this phone,
and that's the polarization of the screen.
If you're wearing polarized sunglasses
and you're outside in the bright sunlight,
you turn it horizontally to take pictures,
you're not going to be able to see a thing
on the screen.
I hate that.
I makes it nearly worthless outside for me.
But down on the bottom on the front side
we have the fingerprint censor.
HTC has done these really well for awhile now,
and it continues here.
It's both a fingerprint censor and a home button,
and it's got a--
It has a back button and recent apps on either side.
Totally the way to do it
if you're going to put the fingerprint censor on the front.
Works really well and HTC's nailed it here.
So HTC also is back
to having strong dual speakers on this phone.
Now, they're maybe not as good as the early days,
the M7 and the M8,
but they're very good just the same.
They work really well
with this new-fangled 3-D spatial-audio thing
when you're shooting video.
Now there is no headphone jack this time, though,
and that's one of those things that doesn't bother me
until it does.
Now, you can either use Bluetooth headphones
or HTC is including some USBC headphones in the box.
That's smart; good job.
Now HTC continues to do a really good job
with the software.
Now there's still a lot on here
that I don't really like, that I won't use.
Bloatware apps, whatever.
But the good news is none of it gets in the way,
none of it slows the phone down in the slightest
and none of it breaks anything.
And I can't say that about other phones
that have been released this year.
Beyond all that, it's just fast,
so I can continue to use things the way I want to use them
without any problems whatsoever.
Now the camera.
HTC has done really, really well
with this over the past year or so.
We've got a 12 megapixel shooter on the back,
16 on the front.
Yes, that almost sounds backwards,
but it's not because it has a larger sensor
for the rear camera.
They still have this ultrapixel thing going on,
where the pixels themselves are larger,
let in more light.
And the software pushing all that
has gotten really good as well.
End of the day,
you're going to have great pictures out of this thing,
either from the front camera of yourself
or from the back camera.
And I really enjoyed using it.
HTC's camera app is really good as well.
Finally, there's battery life.
It's absolutely better than
the 3000 milli Amp hour capacity would lead you to expect,
but then again HTC's gotten their software optimization
really good the past couple of years.
So for me, I've easily been going from sunrise to bedtime
getting through just about an entire day with this
without having to charge it.
So here's the thing about the U11,
silly name aside.
It's one of those phones
where we're going to talk about
the sum of the parts being greater than the whole.
The hardware itself is really good.
The software: really fast, really good battery life.
Are there some gimmicks?
Yeah, the squeezy squeezability thing.
The mirror finish looks great,
but it doesn't really do anything.
It's lacking dual cameras of, say,
the G6 or the iPhone 7 Plus.
It just doesn't have that whizzbang screen
that the Galaxy S8 has.
But what you get is
a kind of expensive but really good
Android smart phone
and a really good camera, as well.
For me it's been about fewer annoyances
and just a really good overall experience,
and, damn, that just looks nice.
If you want more on other smartphones
I've looked at this year,
go hit up that playlist right there.
I've got the G6, got the GS8, got some other stuff.
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That's it; we'll see you later.
(upbeat music)
Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
who's the prettiest photographer of them all?
It's Greg.
I'm a (beep) mulberry.