HTC Unveils New Flagship Smartphone Made for the Brilliant U: Meet the HTC U11

You affectionately squeeze the hand of the one you love. A baby intuitively squeezes her mother’s finger. A child squeezes his teddy bear to feel safe at night. Nothing feels as close, connected and personal as the sensation of touch or the warmth of an embrace. And no device is as personal in our lives as our smartphone.

Inspired by the power of touch and the Brilliant U, HTC today unveiled HTC U11, the world’s first smartphone with revolutionary new squeeze interaction. Made for “U” with design, materials, and experiences that reflect your inner drive, passion, creativity, and individuality, HTC U11 offers the most advanced features ever in a smartphone, including:

• HTC Edge Sense, the next dimension in touch interaction with your phone.
• Liquid Surface, a stunning, unique design that reflects you.
• HTC USonic, our most advanced headset ever built for personal audio, now including Active Noise Cancellation.
• Amazing cameras with the highest independent rating ever awarded to a smartphone camera¹.
• HTC Sense Companion, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa for a smarter, more helpful smartphone².

All together, HTC U11 sets a new standard of what you can expect from a smartphone.

U touch

• Few things are as natural and intuitive as the sense of touch. HTC Edge Sense transforms this fundamental sense into a completely new and revolutionary interaction with your phone. With a simple squeeze, HTC Edge Sense lets you easily engage with your phone in an unprecedented yet intuitive way, helping you more naturally enjoy the things you love like taking photos, opening Facebook, or launching any of your favorite apps.
• For example, with HTC Edge Sense, launching your camera has never been easier. No more fumbling for buttons or awkward hand positions. No more worrying about dropping your phone while you pose. Just lift, squeeze, smile, and snap.
• You can also send texts faster and easier than before. Texting can be impossible when you are on the move, but using HTC Edge Sense for Voice to Text, you can speak your text messages without having to slow down. Lightly squeeze, speak your message and send your texts on the go.
• You can even customize the squeeze gesture: open email with just a squeeze. Or launch your favorite game (or any other app). Or pick any one of a host of options. Want even more touch control? HTC Edge Sense gives you the ability to activate advanced touch and use a “short squeeze” as well as a “squeeze and hold” for even more functionality at your fingertips.
• And because Edge Sense is based on actual pressure applied to the side of the device, it can be used in nearly any condition – including while wearing gloves or in weather such as snow or rain that would normally be a challenge with capacitive buttons.

• The smarter digital companion for U
  • Three brains are better than one, so inside HTC U11 you can find three intelligent companions devoted to you: HTC Sense Companion, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa². In mainland China, HTC U11 also offers Baidu DuerOS.
  • We’ve made HTC Sense Companion smarter than ever: it will get to know you and your daily patterns over time in order to offer you more convenience every day. For example, HTC Sense Companion is smart enough to notice if you have any late appointments that day and will remind you to recharge while you have time or bring a power bank. It will make sure your phone is running at its optimum speed by suggesting to clear junk files and unused apps for more free space. It will let you know if you need to dress for inclement weather conditions, track your fitness progress relative to your goals, recommend great nearby restaurants at mealtime, and much more⁵.
  • HTC U11 runs the latest version of Android, so it also includes Google Assistant, the helpful personal assistant powered by Google se arch and services for finding directions, getting answers, managing your tasks, planning your day, and entertainment.
  • HTC U11 is also the first smartphone on the market to feature hands-free wake word access to Amazon Alexa. By simply asking questions such as “Alexa, what’s the weather today?” or saying things like, “Alexa, turn on my living room lights,” Alexa will respond to your needs anywhere you go, making it easy to control smart home products, ask for news, weather, music, and the 12,000-plus skills in the Alexa skills store. The Alexa voice service is currently available to customers in the United States, U.K., and Germany.
  • And in mainland China, HTC and Baidu DuerOS have built a strategic partnership to create a voice-based virtual assistant with speech recognition and voice interaction to satisfy Chinese users’ needs, which can better understand Chinese people and help them find what they want.