HTC U11 Plus

HTC looks to capture the premium market with its fantastic flagship – HTC U11+. Priced at Rs. 56,990, HTC U11+ is setting itself to be up for the challenge to define the premium market around it.

HTC U11+ will keep your eyes set on the premium body that the phone displays but that is not all. It comes with some strong internals, a great camera, and an exceptional audio capturing capacity that sets it apart from the rest. The phone is, indeed, a capable flagship in all aspects and it does not shy away from showing it.

The HTC U11+ keeps up the HTC tradition in looks, coming with the mirror-finish glass which HTC refers to as ‘Liquid Surface’. It is a glass surface which is polished to a great degree to give it a high gloss. The phone tends to slip and pick up fingerprint smudges easily. However, it looks stunning. The front is almost bezel-free with only top and bottom bezels present. The fingerprint scanner is present at the back below the cameras, and it is conveniently placed, making it easy to reach for your fingers. The phone has a metal band around it which houses the volume and power buttons on the right, but the left side is kept completely blank. The buttons are well-placed, and the power button has a texture present to it so that you can quickly identify it. The SIM tray is placed at the top and the bottom as a subwoofer along with the USB Type-C port.

Unfortunately, for traditionalists, the phone misses out on the 3.5mm headphone jack. At 188g, it is a bit hefty, but that adds to its sturdiness.

The HTC U11+ arrives with a 6-inch sreen along with QuadHD+ resolution, housing 1440 x 2880 pixels and an 18:9 Aspect Ratio. That puts it at around 537 pixels per inch. HTC refers to this display as the Super LCD 6, and it also supports DCI-P3 Wide colour gamut. If you want, you can tweak the colour temperature or even switch to sRGB output. The screen is covered with a Corning Gorilla Glass 5, which keeps the screen from acquiring scratches.

The display offers excellent brightness and can be used outdoors, though it can get a little reflective. The phone also has HDR10 support which starts up when you are watching Netflix and Youtube. The colours are punchy and vibrant.

The HTC U11+ comes with Snapdragon 835 chipset, an octa-core processor clocked at around 2.45GHz. It is the same chipset as the HTC U11. You can have two variants – 4GB and 8GB. HTC U11+ is a powerful handset due to the potent processor. The app load time is very slow, and the UI does not seem to drag in any way. Switching between multiple apps is snappy and without slowdown.

Even when the graphics setting is kept high, the phone can run high-end games like PUBG without experiencing any frame drops. It scores a massive 6,538 in multi-core tests, which makes it a high-end phone to go for.

The HTC U11 had a great set of cameras, and the U11+ follows the tradition. It comes with a 12MP camera with an f/1.7 aperture on the rear. In daylight, the photos come out to be impressive. The auto-focus is rapid, and the shots turn out to be punchy and crisp. The Macros turn out to be great too, with the phone capturing fine details. The edge detection is accurate.

In low-light, the shots turn out to be bright and can capture colours and details quite accurately with the noise kept under control. However, it does falter when there is a very dark scene, causing a bit of a blur.

The U11+ is capable of recording video up to 4K. The videos are brilliant, and optical image stabilization is present, which irons out any shakes in the video footage.

The phone also gives you the ability to record 3D audio by using the four microphones. You can choose High-Res Audio for it. The smartphone comes with an ‘Acoustic Focus’ which uses the microphones to focus only on the subject’s voice and drowns out the background to a minimal. Even the selfie camera can record 3D audio along with 1080p videos.

HTC U11+ has chosen to go for bottom-firing speakers which handle lower frequencies while the earpiece tackles higher-frequencies. This results in loud audio which is quite fruitful. HTC has the BoomSound software which provides a theatre-like experience.

The phone comes with a 3930 mAh battery. The battery is capable, and you can go through an entire day without having to go for a quick top-up. Playing 30-minutes of games, streaming videos, and chatting found the battery lower by 20 percent. In an HD video loop test, it lasted for around 13 hours and 4 minutes, which is impressive.

The QuickCharge 3 charger that the set comes with makes it go from 0% to 60% within 50 minutes, but then it slows down, taking over two hours to complete the charge.

HTC U11+ has everything to impress you – powered by an amazing Snapdragon 835 processor, pleasing cameras and BoomSound speakers, the phone is not a gimmick, have all flagship features well-placed for use. If you don’t want Pixel 2 XL for the display issues and want to choose something apart from the Samsung Galaxy S8+, then this is the phone that you can go for. It won’t disappoint.