Phone parts

It seems like an age since we had an HTC flagship, the HTC 10, as the company chose to wait so that it could include the Snapdragon 835, the latest generation of Qualcomm chipset in its new device.

HTC is once again leaving nothing to chance, taking the concept launched with the previous U handsets - U Play and U Ultra - and producing a third, the flagship, aiming to hit the ball out of the park.

If we had a dollar for every time we said that HTC needed a hit, we'd have more cash than the beleaguered iphone replacement manufacturer. So is the HTC U11 that phone?

HTC U11 design

The HTC U11 might look familiar to HTC fans, because it follows the path laid by the HTC U Ultra and Play announced earlier in 2017. That sees a switch from HTC's metal unibody design, to a design that uses glass front and back.

That's quite the switch, but in a market now dominated by metal phones, it's no bad thing. No one can deny that the HTC U11 is unique. The colours created by HTC's use of glass are inimitable, layered with depth, the sort of finish you might find on a custom car paint job. This isn't a flat grey that looks the same from all directions, it's a shifting shimmer, a dynamic finish that looks wonderful.

Take the Amazing Silver pictured here. We'd normally baulk from such a name, but even in the short time we had with this new phone, you can't help but notice how many colours come out of it. Sometimes it's a cold blue, sometimes it's lavender, sometimes it's like a mirror, reflecting your image back. Boring it is not.

But a fingerprint magnet it is. Metal has the advantage of mostly not showing oily fingerprint marks, which is really what lead the market to be filled with metal iphone screen replacement (that and the strength). The HTC U11 wipes clean easily enough, but you might find that the lighter finishes keep their looks better than the darker. Still, cleaning isn't a problem and fingerprints just wipe off, unless you're smearing your hands with Norwegian Formula six times a day.

The construction itself is rather like the Samsung Galaxy S models, pairing glass front and back with a metal core that makes up the edges. Everything is beautifully sculpted with a high quality finish and you get IP67 water resistance, meaning that HTC is keeping up with the likes ofApple and Samsung in this handset.

Unlike Samsung, this is a regular aspect device with a 16:9 display, that means there's some space above and below the display, the front housing the fingerprint scanner. Although we didn't test this, if it performs like that of the HTC 10, we'll be perfectly happy. Some may even say that sticking to the conventional gives the HTC U11 appeal that Samsung's radical design change in the Galaxy S8 loses.