Tag: HTC

Today’s Deal is on the all new HTC U11.  The phone was announced a few weeks ago and is available from various carriers locked to them.  Now you can pick one up unlocked for $649 on Amazon.  You have three color options – Sapphire Blue, Amazing Silver or Brilliant Black – and all three colors are the same price.

To be very clear:  This is the unlocked GSM version of the phone.  It will not work with Sprint, who has it available directly from the carrier.  This model will work with carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile however.  Here is a rundown of the supported bands:

• GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
• HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700(AWS) / 1900 / 2100
• LTE band 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 4(1700/2100), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 12(700), 13(700), 17(700), 20(800), 25(1900), 26(850), 28(700), 41(2500), 66(1700/2100)

In case you don’t recall, the specs of the HTC U11 are certainly flagship level.  The 5.5″ Quad-HD phone is powered by the Snapdragon 835 octa-core processor with 4 cores clocked at 2.45GHz and 4 at 1.9GHz.  It is coupled with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage which can be expanded an additional 2TB thanks to the MicroSD slot.

Good news this morning for those of you who have the HTC One M9 on the Sprint network.  HTC has confirmed that the Android Nougat 7.0 update has been released by Sprint with updates starting today.  The updated build is 4.27.651.4 and weighs in at a hefty 2.25GB.  HTC is suggesting that the update will take about 20 minutes to complete and will reboot your One M9 several times during the process.  It is recommended that you have at least 35% remaining battery or, better, having your phone plugged in to AC (but don’t unplug it during the upgrade process) to upgrade.  Given the size of the update, Wi-Fi is the best option to download.

Once you have it downloaded to your phone and installed, you will have all of the benefits of Nougat including multi-window support, improved Doze and improved notification shade amongst many other refinements.  You can read my overview of Nougat 7.0 for more details.

Good news this morning for those of you who have the HTC One A9 on Sprint.  Android Nougat is rolling out to you starting today.  The software update from the carrier is build 2.18.651.2 and it brings Android Nougat 7.0 to your phone along with the January Android Security update.  With it, you get all the goodness that is Nougat including multi-window support, improved data saver and other features.

The OTA update should be hitting devices soon but you can always manually check for it by going to Settings>System Updates>HTC Software Updates on your phone.  As these things tend to go, it will take a few days before everyone sees the update so patience is required.

To say that HTC has had a challenging time rolling out Android Nougat to their flagship HTC 10 device in Europe would be… well, it would be putting it nicely.  The fact is, it has been a debacle.  It originally rolled out back in November but was stopped due to software issues.  It was resumed, then stopped once again for “technical” issues.  So will this third attempt finally stick?  Let’s all hope so.

If you are in mainland Europe and have a 10, you should start seeing the OTA update to move you to Nougat over the course of the next few days.  That update will require a reboot of course but will not wipe your phone (last week HTC released the update for those who wanted to manually flash that wiped their devices by design).   Overall the update should take you about 30 minutes from start to finish but make sure you are on Wi-Fi to do the download of the update as it is just over 1GB in size.

HTC has announced two new phones that will be coming soon to select markets, the HTC U Ultra and HTC U Play.  The new lineup is a departure in design for HTC with both phones having a curved glass design over metal designs like the HTC 10.  What’s interesting here is that HTC isn’t being real clear on if the new U lineup is replacing the 10 or if it is a complementary device.  With the 5.7″ Ultra expected to be around $749, it certainly has a flagship price tag to go along with the flagship specs.

Focusing on the HTC U Ultra, it has a 5.7″ Quad HD display along with a 2′ secondary display that is 160 x 1040 in resolution.  That secondary display is aimed for things like notifications and is strikingly similar to the second display on the LG V20.  Powering the phone is a quad-core Snapdragon 821 processor running at 2.15GHz and is coupled with the Adreno 530 GPU.  It has 4GB of RAM and either 64 or 128GB of storage which can be expanded up to an additional 2TB thanks to the MicroSD slot.  You will also find a fingerprint scanner built into the Ultra.

The main camera of the Ultra is a 12MP shooter with laser auto focus, phase detection auto focus, OIS and a dual tone LED flash.  The front facing camera is an even more impressive 16MP shooter.  The Ultra has a 3000 mAh battery which is good but battery life will be interesting to find out as the 5.7″ display is certainly going to draw a fair amount of juice.  All of this in a sleek package that is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5.  What is not know is which markets or even a definitive launch date for the Ultra.  It looks like the price will be around $750 but that’s about all that is know otherwise.

Great news to start your Friday HTC 10 owners.  If you have one here in the US and it is unlocked, Android Nougat will be hitting your device starting today.  The news came from HTC’s Mo Versi who announced it on Twitter late on Thanksgiving day (when most of us were in food coma).

Happy Thanksgiving! HTC 10 unlocked owners will receive Nougat OS update tomorrow morning! Enjoy!

— Mo Versi (@moversi) November 24, 2016

The HTC 10 has been one of the more underrated phones of 2016.  It is a solid performer with solid specs and now that it has Nougat, it will really bump up the appeal of this phone.  HTC has also been fantastic about keeping this phone up-to-date by having security patches out 30-45 days after they are released from Google.  This alone makes them stand out from other manufactures but you are also getting a great phone on top of it.