Exactly one month after unveiling its innovative new smartphone, HTC U11, which has squeezable edges, has today been launched in India for ₹51,999. The device was launched by the Taiwanese giant at an event in India and is being exclusively made available via Amazon and through offline retailers from last week of June.
The HTC U11 retains the similar U Ultra look, with a 5.5-inch, Quad HD display. It still includes capacitive navigation keys and a fingerprint scanner mounted in the home button. The device is powered by the greatest Snapdragon 835 chipset, which may help it gain an edge over competitors like LG, who picked the old Snapdragon 821 processor.
This processing power was coupled with two memory and storage variants — 4GB RAM/64GB onboard storage and 6GB RAM/128GB onboard storage. But, the Taiwanese giant has only launched the high-end variant of the device in India. HTC U 11 includes support for MicroSD cards to help you expand on the internal storage. It is powered by a decent 3,000 mAh battery pack, lacks the 3.5mm headphone jack.
As for the optics, the device includes a 12-megapixel rear camera with optical stabilization and dual-pixel autofocus along with 16-megapixel ultrapixel front camera with a 150-degree wide-angle lens.
But, the highlight of the HTC U11 will definitely have to be the “squeezable” edges, i.e pressure-sensitive edges. The said feature enables you to perform different functions simply by squeezing the sides of the device. The sensor will act as the replacement for some of the functions which usually require you to interact with the touchscreen.
This feature has been named ‘Edge Sense’ and works due to the integration of sensors, which are designed to detect pressure, directly into the sides of the HTC U 11. One can configure both the shortcut interactions, as well as the pressure sensitivity, of the sensors to activate the feature. This means you can either short squeeze the edge to open the camera app and take a selfie within seconds or assign the long squeeze gesture to activate AI-powered mobile voice assistant — both Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa.
While HTC U 11 has been launched in five colors variants, namely — Amazing Silver, Sapphire Blue, Ice White, Brilliant Black and Solo Red across the globe. But, only two variants, including Sapphire Blue and Brilliant Black have been made available in India. The pre-orders for HTC U11 will kick off on June 17 via HTC’s online store and those who order the same will receive an HTC flip cover worth Rs. 1,999 for free.
