Day two with the HTC U11
While this is technically more like day four, I didn’t have a SIM to test real performance connected to a network, streaming, any sort of real life usage until yesterday when a FedEx Padded Pak came which contained a FedEx document envelope which contained a 4 1/8″ x 9 1/2″ envelope which contained a SIM card.
Yeah, packaging was 800 times the SIM weight/surface area… oh well…
Contents of this piece are: Music, bloatware, selfie cam, battery, LTE speed.
U11’s HTC USonic
So I’ve moved onto the included headsets and HTC’s USonic processing.
You plug the headphones, it asks you if you want to configure it based on your ears. OK phone, let’s go. A brief tone is played and plays a little tune so you can compare enhanced and unenhanced and then you wonder what to do.
I played music through Google Play – I noticed that even with a low volume there’s some sort of compression or tight sound that seems to permeate. I turned off the profile and that went away. It’s evidently the active noise cancellation antinoise that I’m hearing. Maybe I’m imagining it.
I started typing with the music extremely low. I can’t hear the keys. Stop the music and volume returns? Whatever they’re doing it’s pretty good at shutting the outside world out.
The HTC U11 Music experience (out of the box)
It started out great, and then goes downhill pretty quickly as the pre installed bloatware News Republic service starts audio spamming you.
This is probably a Sprint thing, so I’m not really down on HTC for this.
I got through two songs before I got a notice about celebrity parents dinging notification over my music. The next song I got a note about famous celebrity parents of twins.
There’s no way to delete the app, and restoring it to factory settings removes the functionality that allows you to go in and mute the thing. So opened it to get to the settings page.
First thing I saw on opening News Republic on the HTC U11 was completely NSFW – here’s a pic, I’ve added happy faces.
While see-through leggings exposing butholes and genitals, and then just a pantless/underwearless woman might be relevant to my interests, this is straight out of the box with no permissions.
So, News Republic set to mute, force stopped the app just to make sure things are good.
Alternately I could have long pressed the notification in the status area and chose to mute it there, but I wanted it gone.
That taken care of I started listening and was blown away by .. damnit, got an email. OK, that ripped me out of music nirvana. Perhaps HTC needs a “you’re playing music, do you want to disable audio notification from other apps?” thing.
Side note, They Might Be Giants covered Bills, Bills, Bills which is something I just happened on while doing this section.
HTC U11 battery
Based on my notes for the HTC M9 and HTC 10 when they first came out my guess is this will last about 20% longer. So a good day of real use which sort of jives with this review although they say it can reach a day and a half.
Your experience will vary based on what you do obviously. Screen on, junk apps, brute force attack apps, and Facebook drain battery like nobody’s business.
It’s got a 3000mAh battery, which is kind of meh for long term. No user serviceable parts as usual. Unless they’ve changed the battery tech you can assume that 3000 mAh unit will deliver ~2700 by the end of year one.
Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.x spec, which is sad now that 4.0 is out and promises five hours use for five minutes charge. I really did want to see that in an HTC flagship but oh well. Quick Charge 3.0 is still pretty fast.
HTC U11 selfie cam
Something’s up with this. You may recall the Myspace angles. This camera epitomizes them. I’m going to post some very unflattering pics here and talk about what the camera did to them.
I took this at eye level. It didn’t look right to me but we’re going to use this at my base. I’m going to tell myself that the mirror and the camera show different things and we’ll assume this is me.
I raised the angle for your classic Myspace photo and… my forehead became a fivehead. I had to go and measure my face to verify it’s stretched. Or I’m seeing things.
Here is an audition picture for my tryout for the character The Leader in the next Hulk movie.
This isn’t a huge amount different than any selfie cam, but the U11 felt somewhat flatter if that makes sense. Eh, portrait selfie mode not my thing. I will note that landscape selfies look like I expect even attempting to recreate the fivehead I fail.
HTC U11 LTE speed (inconclusive)
Testing my HTC 10 against the U11, the U11 was always at least 40% faster on LTE downloads at my house. Testing in the office with the phones placed in the same space for testing, the same server, everything the speed of the U11 is 750% faster on downloads, 100% faster on uploads.
Why isn’t this conclusive? The review unit I have may have a corporate setting, no limits, be a unit designed to impress. I know Verizon used to be notorious for having towers/tiers of service for corporate customers that were amazing which is one reason people used custom PRLs.
I’ve got an email in. Hope to have an answer soon.
End of day two
Still playing with it, but as of yet there’s no point where I’ve been terribly annoyed with the speed.
Don’t do portrait selfies.
If someone were to purchase this for me I’d like it.
