Despite the recent acquisition of some of its talent
and licensing of its IP portfolio by Google, Taiwanese phone maker HTC is set
to announce a couple of devices at the start of next month. We know a fair bit
of information about them: one will be a mid-ranger named the U11 Life, while
the other will be an upgraded variant of the U11, called the U11 Plus.
But today has brought us a bit more information
about both of those: the former got a full specs and price reveal, while the
latter got its first real-life photos. Exciting! WinFuture.de has managed to
obtain the full specifications for the Android One version of the U11 Life, as
well as an official render (albeit one with a very low resolution). In essence,
they pretty closely match the ones we've already heard: a Snapdragon 630 SoC, a
5.2-inch Full HD display, 16 MP cameras both on the front and the back, a 2,600
mAh battery, and an IP67 water and dust resistance rating.
But while there was previously some ambiguity as to
the amount of RAM and storage the different versions will get, it appears we
now know the answer. The specs listed today show only 32 GB of expandable
storage, which an earlier specs combined with 3 GB of RAM. However, since these
specs seem to be of a European version of the phone, it's not immediately clear
whether the U.S. version will also come with those, or if it will have the
slightly better 4 GB/64 GB combo instead.
A surprise here is the lack of a headphone jack:
while the U11 didn't come with one as well, this "feature" tends to
be limited to flagships only, regardless of manufacturer. But to rectify this,
the U11 Life will also come with pair of
USB-C USonic earphones. The device will come in two color variants:
"Sapphire Blue" and "Ice White," and will cost about € 400
(which we imagine will translate to about US$ 400 in the U.S).
But the bigger device of the two is definitely HTC's
slight refresh of the U11, which we've technically also seen before but in
CAD-based renders only. However, Chinese regulatory agency TENAA has just
published the first real photos of the device, which you can see above.
Unsurprisingly, the photos match the renders pretty
much perfectly: the front of the device features no fingerprint scanner because
of the tall, 18:9 display. Instead, it has now been moved to the rear panel
below the camera (which is still a single-sensor module).
The U11+ will be a mostly visual upgrade over the
regular U11: apart from the tall display and moved fingerprint scanner, the
only other major change will be an upgraded 4,000 mAh battery capacity and 6 GB
of RAM. Also, the device is expected to launch with the brand-new Android 8.0
Oreo.
The two devices are expected to launch at HTC's
November 2 event, which is less than two weeks from now.
