MWC 2017: HTC shows HTC U Ultra and HTC U Play

Published: 27.02.2017

At the very stately HTC's booth at this year's MWC the stars are HTC Vive goggles, and new smartphones: HTC U Ultra and HTC U Play.


Nowości od HTC video: Video in Polish from mGSM.pl via YouTube

The new smartphones make an excellent impression. They have sleek casings with backs finished with curved glass. It is covered with an iridescent paint which gives an interesting visual effect.

Elegant casings with backs finished with curved glass
photo: Adam Łukowski/GSMchoice.com

HTC U Ultra is packed with interesting solutions. It has an additional screen placed above the right one, main display. While at the rest the additional display shows notifications or a clock, and after unlocking the main screen – it becomes a pop-up shortcut menu. There also appear information from the selected applications, it is also possible to control music playback.

An additional screen above the main one
photo: Adam Łukowski/GSMchoice.com

The phone also has an interesting front camera. It has a 16-megapixel sensor capable of operating in Ultrapixel mode. In normal light it takes 16-megapixel pictures, while at the low light - 4-megapixel. Because then the pixels combine to capture more light.

The main camera is taken from HTC 10. It has PDAF, a laser autofocus and a dual LED flash.

There are also added to the phone the advanced headphones automatically adjusting to the possibility of your hearing, and the phone has four microphones, allowing not only for noise reduction and audio recording in video but also support advanced voice control, which "learns" the user's voice.

HTC U Play is a smaller and cheaper model. It has a different camera, a MediaTek processor and a smaller FullHD screen. The phone received a 5.2-inch FullHD display and an octa-core MediaTek Helio P10 processor, supported by 3 GB of RAM. The phone also has 32 or 64 GB of internal memory and a microSD card slot up to 2 TB. Like U Ultra, HTC Play U does not have the mini-jack (only USB-C), and has a system of adjusting the sound - Usonic.

In addition to the U series, we found at the stand also already known models Desire 650, 10 Lifestyle and 10 Pro.

But most impressive are the virtual reality goggles HTC Vive. I tried to walk on a board protruding from the building. I was terrified, and therefore – it probably works?