HTC U Ultra smartphone review: Flawed beauty

Note: This article was first published on 1st April 2017.

Overview

After years of playing it safe with its flagship phones (most recently the HTC 10), HTC's U Ultra is a bold step in a new direction with an interesting glass design, a larger 5.7-inch display, a secondary display for notifications and quick controls, and a machine-learning AI assistant that learns about your routine and helps you out. But at S$898, and sporting a six-month-old Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, does it offer enough to bring HTC back to the realm of smartphone relevance? Let's find out.

Design

The U Ultra is a big change from HTC's usual all-metal designs with a metal frame and an eye-catching glossy glass rear. Okay, the Brilliant Black model I'm reviewing does look quite a lot like a Jet Black iPhone 7 Plus, but the Sapphire Blue and Cosmetic Pink colors are absolutely gorgeous.

The contoured 3D glass on the rear curves symmetrically over the edges of the phone, a process HTC is calling "3-axis symmetry", which makes it  different from other 3D glass-backed phones that generally just curve downwards at the top and bottom. It's a subtle difference but a nice touch that makes the U Ultra stand out a bit from the sea of glass and metal phones out there. As a nice bonus, there are also no visible antenna lines on the rear. Of course, like other glass-backed phones, the finish is a big time fingerprint and smudge magnet, so be prepared to wipe it down fairly frequently.

Additionally, after a few days with the U Ultra, I've noticed that the glass rear scratches quite easily. HTC actually includes a clear plastic cover with the phone in the box, but honestly, it looks terrible with the cover on.

While the U Ultra looks great, it does feel quite unwieldy in hand. There's been a recent trend towards large displays in small bodies, like the LG G6 and Xiaomi Mi Mix, but due to the U Ultra's front fingerprint sensor, secondary display and relatively fat bezel, it's one of the biggest smartphones out there. Just for comparison's sake, the U Ultra (162.4 x 79.8 x 8 mm) has a volume of 103.67mm³, Samsung's 5.7-inch A7 (2017) (156.8 x 77.6 x 7.9 mm) has a volume of 96.12mm³, and LG's 5.7-inch G6 (148.9 x 71.9 x 7.9 mm) has a volume of just 84.58mm³. While all three phones have 5.7-inch displays, compared to the G6 and A7, the U Ultra just feels massive and awkward to use one-handed. Even the dual-screen phone like LG's well featured V20 (159.7 x 78.1 x 7.6mm) only has a volume of just 94.79mm³. So you can see why we feel the U Ultra is just unwieldy.

The volume rocker and power button are located on the right side of the phone. The SIM card tray is on top with the dual-SIM's second slot also doubling up as a microSD card slot that supports cards up to 256GB.

On the bottom you'll find a USB Type-C port and... that's it. Yes, like the iPhone 7, the U Ultra doesn't have a headphone port.

On the back of the phone is a huge square camera bump that looks really dated in 2017. It's about the same size as the camera bump on the Samsung Galaxy S6, and that phone came out in 2015. It's a pity because the ugly bump really spoils the otherwise clean look of the phone.

Below the display is a skinny fingerprint scanner/home button that is flanked by two backlit capacitive Android navigation keys. The fingerprint scanner works well, and is fast and responsive, but I don't understand why HTC made it so thin. There's a massive amount of unused space above the button, and putting it as low as possible just makes it harder to press, especially when I'm already juggling this behemoth of a phone trying not to drop it. The fact that the home button and navigation keys aren't centered also bothers me.

Another thing to note about the build is that it isn't dust or water resistant, which is a shame when most other flagship phones now sport IP68 ratings.

Displays

The U Ultra has two displays, the main 5.7-inch Quad HD 2,560 x 1,440 pixels resolution (~513ppi) Super LCD5 panel and a secondary 2.05-inch 160 x 1,040 pixels (~513ppi) strip that sits at the top right edge of the phone, next to the camera. The main display is sharp with decent color reproduction, good contrast for an LCD screen and excellent viewing angles. You'll still get better contrast from an AMOLED panel, and the maximum brightness is a little dim, which makes it hard to use under bright sunlight, but it's good enough for most usage cases.

The secondary display is somewhat similar to the one we've already seen on the LG V20 and can be used to display notifications and control music playback, view the weather, change a setting, or quickly jump into a favorite app or contact. You scroll through its list of features by swiping along the screen.

Unfortunately, the U Ultra's secondary display is far inferior to the one on the V20. First of all, it's far too dark, and there's no option to adjust the brightness:

Second of all, unlike the V20, the U Ultra's secondary display isn't used in any apps, and it just displays a blank screen when you've got an app running on the main display. Even something simple, like how the V20 moved the camera controls to the secondary display to remove clutter from the main screen would have been a useful addition. 

Thirdly, the secondary display's settings are far more confusing than it needs to be, offering a different set of options depending on whether the main display is unlocked or not. For example, the useful settings and apps launcher, which lets you quickly toggle Wi-Fi on and off, turns the torch on and off, and has a handy quick launch to the camera app, is only available when the display is off - there's no option to show it when the main display is on. This lack of consistency is more frustrating than it's worth.

Worst of all, unlike the V20's secondary display, the secondary display on the U Ultra isn't always-on. Instead you have to double tap the secondary display or raise the phone up when the main display is off to turn it on, which completely negates the point of a secondary display, since if I have to interact with my phone to turn it on, I might as well just turn on the main display. I also found that the double tap to wake didn't always work, or I accidentally tapped too low and woke the main display instead. There's not even an settings option to force the display to be always-on, the best you can do is a 60 second timeout.

Audio

HTC's BoomSound stereo speakers have always been one of the high points of its phones, and while that's still true with the U Ultra, I can't help but miss the days of the HTC One with its two dedicated front-facing speakers. Like the more recent HTC 10, the U Ultra doubles up the earpiece speaker with another speaker located on the phone's bottom edge (similar to what Apple does with the iPhone 7). The sound is still pretty good, with plenty of volume and some surprisingly decent channel separation, but where HTC used to be the undisputed king of smartphone audio, now I can't tell much difference between the U Ultra and my iPhone 7.

As I mentioned above, like the iPhone 7, the U Ultra doesn't have a headphone port. However, unlike the iPhone, the U Ultra doesn't come supplied with a 3.5mm adapter. Instead, you get a pair of HTC's USonic USB Type-C earbuds. These earbuds pair with HTC's pre-installed USonic software to create a personalized audio profile based on the unique shape of your ear canal. It sounds a bit gimmicky and, while the USonic earphones sounded noticeably louder after I set up my personalized audio profile, I didn't notice any difference in audio quality compared to a pair of cheap Bluetooth earphones I had lying around.

Unfortunately, I wasn't even able to test my regular headphones with the U Ultra because the phone isn't compatible with third-party USB-C to 3.5mm adapters. HTC uses a proprietary audio codec inside the U Ultra, which means the only USB-C to 3.5mm adapter that works with it is HTC's own US$11.99 adapter, which is currently out of stock on HTC's US website and, as far as I can tell, isn't even available locally. 

Software & Features

The U Ultra runs on Android 7.0 Nougat and HTC's Sense UI 8. Not much has changed with the UI since the HTC 10, except for the introduction of HTC's new machine-learning AI assistant: Sense Companion. Like most AI assistants, you can voice activate Sense Companion thanks to four always listening microphones on the device. You can use your voice to set alarms and reminders for you, and you can also dismiss or snooze alarms the same way. Unlike other AI assistants, Sense Companion doesn't talk back to you, instead it provides updates and notifications in the secondary display. In most cases, this is fine (although the display is a little small for some notifications), but if you're unable to read your smartphone display - for example, when you're driving - you really want your AI assistant to talk to you instead.

Sense Companion does most of the things other AI assistants like Google Assistant will do, like notifying you about your schedule by reading your calendar, or alerting you that it might rain tomorrow. It also incorporates machine-learning that tracks your activity and behavior and can send you notifications based on that. For example, if it notices that you frequently run out of battery during the evening, it will remind you to charge the device during the day. Unfortunately, after using the U Ultra for the past few days, I still get this message on the main Sense Companion screen, so I can't comment on how effective its learning algorithms are:

It's worth noting that the U Ultra can also run Google's own Google Assistant if you're not too keen on Sense Companion.

Performance Benchmarks

Rather than wait for Qualcomm's new flagship Snapdragon 835 processor, HTC has opted for last year's Snapdragon 821 paired with 4GB RAM, which is now six-months-old. It's the same decision LG made with the G6, and while the 821 isn't particularly new or exciting, it's still got plenty of power.

Sunspider Javascript

SunSpider JavaScript measures the browsing performance of a device when processing JavaScript. It not only takes into consideration the underlying hardware performance, but also assesses how optimized a particular platform is at delivering a high-speed web browsing experience. 

Despite having the same processor as the OnePlus 3T the HTC U Ultra was a little slower in this benchmark. The main reason for this is probably the 3T's extra 2GB RAM.

Quadrant

Quadrant is an Android benchmark that evaluates a device's CPU, memory, I/O and 3D graphics performances. Once again, while the U Ultra performed well, it was beaten by the OnePlus 3T. Samsung's Exynos 8890-powered Galaxy S7 Edge was the runaway winner here.

3DMark Sling Shot

3DMark Sling Shot is an advanced 3D graphics benchmark that tests the full range of OpenGL ES 3.1 and ES 3.0 API features including multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers and transform feedback. The test also includes impressive volumetric lighting and post-processing effects. We're running this benchmark in Unlimited mode, which ignores screen resolutions.

The U Ultra again performed well here but was again beaten by the 3T and S7 Edge. The iPhone 7 Plus remains the reigning champion in this benchmark.

Imaging

Despite the huge camera bump on its rear, the U Ultra's main camera isn't actually that impressive. The specs are decent enough, with a 12-megapixel sensor, f/1.8 aperture, large, 1.55-micron pixel size, optical image stabilization and hybrid phase-detection and laser autofocus, but it doesn't really stand out from other flagship smartphone cameras out there, especially when other brands are offering dual-camera configurations and other interesting camera tricks.

Image quality from the U Ultra's rear camera can be quite good, but it lacks consistency, with the auto focus struggling occasionally, especially in low light, and some photos suffering from poor exposure. Colors also tend to look a little dull.

On the front of the phone is a 16-megapixel selfie camera (yes the front camera has a higher resolution camera than the back). The front camera doesn't have any special features, but it does take a good selfie.

Battery Life

Our standard battery test for mobile phones has the following parameters:

• Looping a 720p video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
• Constant data streaming through email and Twitter

The U Ultra has a 3,000mAh capacity battery, which is far too small for a QHD phablet. For comparison, the 5.7-inch Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017) has a 3,600mAh battery, the LG G6 has a 3,300mAh battery and the 5.5-inch OnePlus 3T has a 3,400mAh battery. All of these phones are also smaller than the U Ultra. Considering how massive the U Ultra is, it's disappointing HTC wasn't able to squeeze a bigger battery in there. As a result, the phone lasted just short of eight hours on our battery benchmark. In daily usage, I found myself running out of battery at around 7PM.

The U Ultra supports Qualcomm's Quick Charge 3.0 technology, which will get you to about 60 percent charge in 30 minutes, and fully charge the phone in about 90 minutes. It would have been nice to see wireless charging as well, but unfortunately, it's not supported.

Conclusion

The HTC U Ultra isn't a bad phone, but it just doesn't offer enough to justify its S$898 price tag. With the rise of brands like OnePlus and Xiaomi, HTC needs to offer more than just a pretty design and decent specs if it wants to charge a premium price. Compared to the flagship models offered by Samsung, Apple, LG, and Sony, the U Ultra doesn't offer anything unique or special, and it lacks features like an IP68 build that have become standard on many high-end phones. Its two big selling points, the secondary display, and AI Sense Companion aren't new or even well executed, and we've already seen similar features done better on older phones.

The U Ultra's best feature is its premium design, but even this is marred by the huge rear camera bump that makes it look like a phone from 2015.

The U Ultra isn't very user-friendly either. It's far too big and awkward to use one-handed comfortably, and the lack of a headphone port, and the inability to use third-party USB Type-C to 3.5mm adapters means you either have to buy HTC's own 3.5mm adapter (if you can even find it in stock) or you're stuck using HTC's USonic earphones or some Bluetooth headphones. The 3,000mAh battery is also woefully inadequate for a QHD phablet of this size.

Benchmark performance on the U Ultra is decent enough, but with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 just around the corner, it doesn't make sense to pay top dollar for a phone with a six-month-old processor now. In fact, HTC itself is rumored to be unveiling a new, more sensibly-sized 5.5-inch version of the U Ultra with a Snapdragon 835 processor within the next month, rendering this version obsolete a mere three months after its announcement, which just feels like a huge slap in the face to any HTC fan that has already bought this phone. So with that in mind, even if nothing in this review has put you off the HTC U Ultra and you're determined to buy one, you're still better off skipping this phone and waiting for the 835 version to come out.

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