HTC U11 life

HTC U11 Life review

As Android One’s UK debut phone, the U11 Life is a pretty decent mid-ranger, with a competent camera and subtle but sleek styling. Although you can bet those thick bezels are going to date quicker than frosted tips and double denim. It’s the price that makes this a tricky phone to recommend. The Moto G5 Plus has a better battery and almost-stock Android (albeit Nougat rather than the newer Oreo), plus it costs £90 less. And it has a headphone jack, too. The excellent value Honor 9 is only £30 more, but packs in two cameras for more flexibility, a beefier CPU for more power, and an even more premium build. IP67 waterproofing is a bonus you won’t get on similarly-priced rivals, and you won't find squeezy sides on any other mid-range phones, but it means sacrificing other things like battery life to get them. If a stock Android UI is important and you can’t afford a Pixel, it’s easy enough to justify finding room in your pocket for one of these right now - but if you can wait a bit, it'll be interesting to see which other companies also give Android One a try. And you’re not fussed about custom skins? Then the alternatives are very tempting indeed.

HTC U11 Life review review

HTC U11 Life review

Overall, the HTC U11 Life is a solid mid-range phone. Design and specs are largely decent for the price – especially getting 64GB of storage and 4GB of RAM as standard. Meanwhile Android One keeps software clean and simple if that's what you're after. This, and Edge Sense, are the main reasons to buy this phone over rivals but there's strong competition. At the same price, the Moto X4 has better cameras and a bigger battery if those things are important. A little more will get you the even better Honor 9 and the outstanding OnePlus 5T isn’t much more than that.

HTC U11 Life review: Stuck between a good deal and a hard place

HTC's U11 Life is a decent midrange phone, but the Moto G5 Plus shoots better photos for a little less. The HTC U11 Life is caught right in the middle of being a great deal and not quite worth your time. For a fraction of the price of the full-size and fully-powered U11, the smaller U11 Life has the same supple look in a beautiful blue body and the same squeezable sides as the U11 and Google Pixel 2 ($100 at Amazon). Squeeze once to open an app and long-squeeze to open a second. It's a little gimmicky and easy to forget it's there, but if you start relying on it to open your favorite app, it can be a fast way to get to what you need.

HTC U11 Life review: Stock Android with a so-so camera

The U11 Life is a solid stock Android experience that’s easy to recommend if you can’t stand all the other options or are particularly drawn in by the design and waterproofing. HTC are in a weird spot.

HTC U11 life

ImageTagInstance gallery-00cbdb9b-efad-49cd-b111-fc5ad0431995 Smartphones run the gamut in terms of features and prices, and while we all might love to be carrying the hottest, best-performing, most stylish handset around, models like that have a tendency to also be among the most expensive. Luckily for shoppers who'd rather not spend the better portion of a month's rent on a new phone, there are also tons of more affordable options worth checking out.While some of those more budget-concious phones are built from the ground up as such, others emerge as scaled-down versions of full-price flagships, aiming to deliver a user experience that's still somewhere in the ballpark of what we'd get from their more expensive brethren, while dialing back on some of the less necessary expenditures.That kind of flagship-lite phone is just what we're looking at today, as HTC introduces the HTMLTagInstance html-tag-f076d4c1-d35b-40c8-8219-2fbe7a25a012 U11 life, a device that aims to deliver some of the...