We won't know specifics until the company announces its Q2 earnings in mid-August, but things are looking good for the U11, which has received the best reception of any HTC flagship since the One M7 back in 2013. So even though you can only buy the HTC U11 from one American carrier, and arguably the least attractive one for most people, the U11 is doing considerably better than last year's HTC 10. I'm not going to be as bold as to say the U11 is a far better phone than, say, the LG G6, but LG has managed to leverage its brand outside of the phone space to ensure its place within it. It also failed to burn barns at Verizon, which is likely why Sprint was the only U.S. Just look at what happened to the HTC 10 after it debuted at T-Mobile - it was quietly cut from the carrier's inventory two months later. I'm not the first to raise this point, but it's worth re-asserting in the light of the Moto Z2 Force's surprising carrier adoption: HTC is no longer a tier one manufacturer in the U.S., and its brand has almost no clout at the retail level. Though I was initially skeptical that HTC called the U11's camera an 'UltraPixel', I think the term is justified (as opposed to last year).īut as good as the U11 is, it's caught in a profoundly disconcerting reality of The American Carrier Cartel.
But now it is working with a stellar sensor, a robust stabilization system, and the Snapdragon 835's exemplary image signal processor.
#Htc 10 vs 11 manual
HTC still has one of the best manual modes of any phone maker, and with the U11 it hasn't messed with a good thing.
It's fast and accurate it produces great photos in almost every lighting condition. Also wonderful is having a metal phone that doesn't constantly feel like it is going to jello its way out of my hand.Īnd then there's the camera: this is easily the best camera I've used on a phone to date. Having a reliable front fingerprint sensor, after coming from the Galaxy S8, is wonderful. What did surprise me was just how seamlessly everything connected - that the criticisms leveled against the U11 largely fall away once you begin to use it. It wasn't a shock to learn that the company didn't need to ride the tiny bezel train to differentiation.
#Htc 10 vs 11 software
I wasn't taken aback by the fact that HTC delivered another stellar piece of hardware, or that its software was unobtrusive and relatively lightweight. It's a really great phone that does so much right with so few missteps along the way.īefore I used the phone, reading Andrew's take on the phone surprised me. If the U11 doesn't sell well in 2017, it will have nothing to do with the outright quality of the phone itself. What does that mean? It starts with this: The HTC 10 was a triumphant return to form in 2016, and the HTC U11 is 2017's most solid phone so far. Despite what I consider to be top-tier flagships in five of the last six years (2015's One M9 was a bad phone whichever way you slice it), HTC can't catch a break. Smartphones are a commodity, and now that we've entered a stage of maturity in the market - it's hard to buy a bad phone from any company - the same forces play out year after year.įor the last few years, HTC hasn't been inside that gale, and it would be a stretch to call it a force. That fact is perhaps best exemplified by LG's disappointing second quarter, which found the Korean company admitting that its excellent G6 flagship sold below expectations.
For all intents and purposes, the high-end market is a duopoly between the Galaxy and the iPhone, and no effusive story (like this) is going to change consumer behavior.
#Htc 10 vs 11 android
Samsung had yet another juggernaut quarter, selling millions of Galaxy S8s and outselling every other Android manufacturer many times over.