HTC has today announced its new smartphone, the U Ultra, at an event held in Taiwan. While the HTC U Ultra wasn’t advertised as a flagship device by the company during the presentation, the hardware that this device packs and the price tag it carries surely puts it along the lines of some flagships available in the market.
Starting with hardware, the HTC U Ultra comes with Snapdragon 821 SoC under the hood which is clocked at 2.15 GHz and laced with 4 GB RAM along with Adreno 530 GPU. The device runs on Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box and is kept going by a 3000 mAh battery which is actually small for a smartphone which boasts a 5.7-inch Quad-HD display. Oh, and we shouldn’t forget the fact that the device also comes with a secondary display which is located above the main display, something similar to the one on LG V20.
The secondary screen is used to show your top contacts, app shortcuts, event notifications and much more. HTC has also introduced HTC Sense Companion which makes use of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to constantly learn from you and give suggestions. It can suggest you to take a power bank with you or fully charge your phone based on your schedule. It can also make clothing suggestions based on the weather.
The HTC U Ultra also comes with voice recognition built-in. You can use your voice to unlock the phone, accept/reject calls, snooze/dismiss alarms and much more. Like Apple, HTC has also ditched the 3.5 mm audio jack and you now have to rely on the USB Type-C port to be able to listen to music through earphones.
Speaking of music, the HTC U Ultra comes with HTC USonic which adjusts the sound for user’s experience for a more personalized experience. “Every person’s inner ear is as unique as their fingerprint. We all experience sound differently. HTC USonic analyzes your inner ears with a sonic pulse, and then adapts to you. It’s like having a sound engineer in your phone; now you can hear the details you were missing.” explains HTC.
However, USonic only works Type-C connections. Oh, and BoomSound fans, stop worrying, HTC hasn’t ditched it. Coming to the construction of the U Ultra, the device flaunts glass on the back and the front and houses a fingerprint scanner on the home button. There’s also a Sapphire glass edition which comes with 128 GB of internal storage.
HTC U Ultra specifications:
- CPU: 2.15 GHz Snapdragon 821 quad-core processor
- RAM: 4 GB
- GPU: Adreno 530
- Operating System: HTC Sense UI based on Android 7.0 Nougat
- Primary Display: 5.7-inch Quad-HD (2560 x 1440 pixels) Super LCD 5 display
- Secondary Display: 2.0-inch display with resolution of 160 x 1040 pixels
- Rear Camera: 12 MP Ultrapixel with dual-tone LED flash, PDAF, laser auto-focus and OIS
- Front Camera: 16 MP Ultrapixel
- Internal Storage: 64 GB (Gorilla Glass 5 variant), 128 GB (Sapphire Glass variant)
- External Storage: Expandable up to 2 TB via microSD card
- SIM: Dual-Hybrid SIM (Nano + Nano/microSD card)
- Connectivity: 4G LTE, NFC, GPS, Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
- Other: HTC BoomSound, HTC USonic, USB Type-C, Fingerprint Scanner
- Colors: Black, Blue, Pink, White
- Battery: 3000 mAh with Quick Charge 3.0
Talking about the price, the regular variant is priced at $749 and will be available in the US and other markets from March. However, the device will be available in Taiwan from later this month.
