HTC U11+

Technical specifications

Too old for today's times (second half of 2023) and some applications are already slowing down. When I bought it as a floor model in 2020, the phone was already three years old technologically - yet it still ran smoothly last year. I am not demanding, I mainly use applications such as navigation, OLX, Allegro - and they run smoothly, however, with a larger number of applications open at once, an application can restart, refresh, or slow down - mainly OLX. Besides that, I have nothing to complain about, it works smoothly on a daily basis, calling, Gmail - everything is fine.

I was afraid that the glass back would not last very long, but despite three years, the phone looks great. The greatest height from which it fell to the ground was about 3.5/4m onto a tiled floor. Nothing happened to it, it has had a transparent case and a protective film on the screen from the beginning - I think this saved it more than once.

It is quite wide compared to today's phones (just like its predecessor HTC U Ultra, so if you do not have large hands, it will be difficult with one hand - there is a software workaround for this, which "shrinks" the screen and moves it to one of the corners, but it is not the same as operating the phone with one hand on the full screen. They changed this in the HTC U12 Plus, where the screen proportion is different and the phone is narrower (there you can also software-reduce the screen with a gesture).

As for the "Edge Sense" phone squeezing function, it can be easily turned off in the pull-down menu from the top (as easy as turning on/off functions like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi). The squeeze force can be calibrated so that it does not activate when taking the phone out of a pocket, nor will it turn out that you need extreme force to trigger it. An interesting feature, sometimes I set it for the camera, sometimes for the flashlight (you can choose what the phone squeeze should launch). When you are in the dark, you do not have to shine the screen in your eyes to turn on the flashlight, you just squeeze the phone and the flashlight turns on. It seems like a simple gadget - but it turns out to be useful and I will miss it in my next phone. You will certainly find Edge Sense in the successor, HTC U12 Plus, as well. There, as far as I remember, you can even set "gestures" on it to launch two different functions.

The battery is excellent, despite so many years and purchasing a floor model where the shop staff warned that the battery might be of poor quality - this one lasts exceptionally well. It easily lasts for one day, and when I use it little and am in places with good coverage, two days without a problem. The battery is most drained by poor coverage or when I turn on location services (and consequently use navigation).

The last update I received for this phone was in December 2021. The latest Android to which the HTC U11 Plus can be updated is version nine. Software-wise, it is very stable. All functions work as they should and during more than three years of use, it froze perhaps 3-4 times. In this respect, using it is a pleasure. This is my third and probably best HTC so far.

If it were not for performance issues, I would probably use it for another three years, we will see, currently these are sporadic slowdowns or the OLX application resetting/refreshing - nothing that would ruin the mood. In Firefox I have over a hundred tabs open + a few in Brave and switching between tabs works with a small lag of about half a second. If it slows down further, I will think about a replacement. If HTC released an HTC U11 Plus 2023 edition ;-) I would buy it. One would need to put in a modern CPU, add about 2-4GB of RAM and maybe a larger capacity battery so it could handle new applications and a more powerful processor. Possibly the option for an OS upgrade so it would have support for newer applications - although currently I have no problem with that, I think that soon developers will start to abandon such an old OS as Android 9 (old in IT and technological terms) and there will be a problem with applications - we shall see.