HTC U Ultra and U Play

HTC U Ultra and U Play - Premium series

HTC has unveiled two new smartphones - HTC U Ultra and HTC U-Play - powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The new launch also marks the debut of the new HTC U series, with the HTC U Ultra and HTC U Play as the first devices. The new HTC U series smartphones are premium offerings that appear to be positioned just below the HTC One series flagship. With the AI-powered Sense Companion, the new HTC U Ultra and HTC U-Play is said to learn from and adapt to the users' behavior in order to make the experience unique to each user.

HTC U Ultra, HTC U Play's Sense Companion AI

With the new HTC U Ultra and HTC U-Play, the company is betting big on it’s new AI assistant called Sense Companion, which it claims will learn your usage behavior over time in order to present you with priority notifications and alerts based on people you contact the most. On the HTC U Ultra, the second ‘ticker-style’ display, called the Priority Screen, is where Sense Companion will display important alerts and notifications. The implementation of the display is very similar to LG’s approach with its X Screen (Review) and V20 (Review) smartphones.

In fact, the U Ultra's exterior is unlike anything else in recent memory. Some of HTC's usual design flourishes, such as the pill-shaped fingerprint sensor and the centered UltraPixel camera, are still here, but the company's designers traded the usual aluminum look for a finish that seems almost liquid. The frame is still made of metal, but the back is covered with a beautiful curved glass that looks almost pearlescent under the right light. It's a gorgeous effect born from HTC's obsession with material science that plays well on all four of the U Ultra's colors (black, white, blue and pink) and beyond all that, it feels pretty great in-hand too, in part thanks to a sleek profile measuring just under 8mm at its thickest point.

Specifications of HTC U Series 

• The HTC U Ultra and HTC U Play mark HTC's move away from metal unibodies for its premium offerings. The phones now feature a 3D contoured glass design, which HTC refer to as “liquid surface”. 
• The HTC U Ultra features a 5.7-inch Quad HD display and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 SoC, with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage which is expandable by up to 2TB. HTC will also offer a premium version of the HTC U Ultra which will have sapphire glass and 128GB of storage. 
• On the other hand, the HTC U-Play has a more palm-friendly 5.2-inch full-HD display and an octa-core MediaTek Helio P10 SoC, plus either 3GB or 4GB of RAM and either 32GB or 64GB of inbuilt storage.
• There’s a single speaker grille and a USB Type-C port at the bottom, while the SIM tray is placed on the top. Both phones ditch 3.5mm audio sockets, a trend HTC seems to be embracing. The HTC U Ultra and HTC U Play feel incredibly well crafted and premium in every respect. The HTC U-Play is a lot more manageable when it comes to single-handed use, but the HTC U Ultra should have its share of takers too.
• These phones' cameras are also going to be important selling points. The HTC U Ultra features a 12-megapixel UltraPixel 2 rear camera with support for OIS, PDAF, laser autofocus, and Auto-HDR. On the front, there’s a 16-megapixel sensor which has the ability to switch to ‘UltraPixel mode’, which according to HTC, is about four times more sensitive to light compared to the standard mode. 
• The HTC U Play also offers the same trickery for the front camera, but its rear camera has a 16-megapixel sensor with similar features as the HTC U Ultra, minus the laser autofocus.

Only the HTC U Ultra runs Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box. The U Play is going to ship with Android 6.0 Marshmallow – not too big of a deal, actually, as both phones run HTC's custom Sense interface, meaning that in terms of core features, both phones should be on the same page. Still, we suppose that an update to Nougat is going to come eventually to the U Play.

The HTC U-Play and HTC U Ultra look like very interesting propositions, and in a way, give us a glimpse into what we can expect from rivals at the upcoming Mobile World Congress. AI assistants will most likely be a common feature across this year’s Android flagships so it’s ultimately down to who has the most compelling solution. It’s heavily rumored that Samsung is also betting big on an AI assistant for the upcoming Galaxy S8, and we expect the same from other key smartphone makers as well. The HTC U Ultra is clearly the bigger phone. That comes as no surprise, as it has to accommodate both a bigger battery and a secondary ticker display. It is also noticeably heavier.

As for HTC’s offering, we’re eager to test out the new Sense Companion to see just how smart it really is in the real world, and if having an AI assistant actually has any significant impact on our daily routine in the long run.