HTC U11

HTC's journey in the Indian smartphone market has seen its fair share of bumps. Earlier this year, the company introduced two high-end smartphones - The U Ultra and Play - and either of them struggled to catch the fancy of the price-conscious Indian consumer. Within a month of the launch, both phones received a price cut as well. Undeterred by the setback, HTC is back with its flagship smartphone - the U11 -- which boasts of the heavily-touted Edge Sense technology. Succeeding the HTC 10, the U 11 has been the talk of the town because of its squeezable metal body design and powerful specifications. Priced at Rs 51,990 the smartphone claims to deliver exceptional performance on all counts -- be it gaming or photography. We spent some time with the device and here is our review of the sleek and stylish HTC U 11.Design and display

When it comes to design of a smartphone, HTC has carved a niche for its own and has won many accolades as well. The brand is known for its design aesthetics and is often praised for introducing really impressive and stylish looking devices. The pretty looking HTC U11 carries forward that design legacy and flaunts a neat design with a metal and glass body. Surrounded by a shiny metal ribbon, the U 11 comes with round edges on all the sides. The front of the device houses a physical home button, which also doubles up as a fingerprint sensor, and 16MP front camera and usual sensors. The right side houses a textured power button along with volume rockers. The SIM card tray is located on the top, while the USB Type C charging port, which is also the audio jack, is placed at the button with the speaker grille. The rear of the device houses a 12MP camera and dual tone LED flash.

HTC U11 review: Performance and battery life camera

And, yes, thanks to its octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, the HTC U11 is among the fastest phones around as well. This is the first Snapdragon 835 touting smartphone we’ve seen in the Expert Reviews offices, and it’s accompanied here by 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, Qualcomm’s Adreno 540 graphics and the Qualcomm X16 modem, which is capable of delivering 4G download speeds of up to a Gigabit per second. There’s also a 128GB storage version with 6GB of RAM available.

In the benchmarks, as you can see from the graphs below, the HTC U11 holds its own against the Android competition, and although it's slightly behind the Samsung Galaxy S8 in each of the tests, it is comfortably faster than the Google Pixel and Pixel XL.

The HTC U11 is an excellent smartphone. It has a superb camera, its battery life is decent, it looks wonderful and performance is superb. Throw in active noise-cancelling headphones, storage expansion and, despite the lack of a long, tall screen, you have one helluva smartphone.

Yes, there’s a handful of small things the HTC U11 doesn’t do as well as its rivals. The screen isn’t quite as nice as the Samsung Galaxy S8’s and I’d prefer the polariser to be arranged diagonally; the camera’s HDR mode can’t quite match the Google Pixel’s and I don’t like the fact that there’s no 3.5mm headphone jack.

However, these are small things I’d be perfectly prepared to live with. The HTC U11 is right up there with the very best smartphones around; it’s a phone that should put HTC right back on the map.