HTC U 11 becomes the first smartphone to support 1Gbps speeds on Sprint

HTC’s latest flagship smartphone – U 11 – is the first to support gigabit (1Gbps) speeds on US cellular carrier Sprint’s network, a report from PCMag website has said. Both HTC and Sprint have also confirmed the same at a press event. Sprint says that its gigabit network (with maximum speeds reaching up to 1Gbps) will roll out over the next 12 months. It has been mentioned that the U 11 comes with 4×4 MIMO on bands 3, 7 and 41. While band 3 is used by Telstra for 1Gbps speeds in Australia, band 7 and 41 are used in Canada and by Sprint respectively for gigabit network speeds.

Samsung’s Galaxy S8 also supports 1Gbps speeds, but on bands used by AT&T and T-Mobile. HTC says that even the unlocked U 11 version is compatible with three other major US carriers; it won’t support 4×4 MIMO, something which will lead to slower speeds. HTC U 11 was launched on May 16 and is up for pre-order in the US and the UK. One of the key highlights of the smartphone is the Edge Sense feature, which claims to offer new interactivity features to the users.

Running HTC Edge Sense user interface based on Android 7.1 Nougat, the U 11 comes with 8 sensors on its side bezels that can register pressure-sensitive squeezes. These sensors are integrated with the Edge Sense functionality and let users do a variety of actions (e.g. launching apps) by squeezing the smartphone’s frame. THe feature can be customized under Settings. HTC U 11 comes with a 5.5-inch QuadHD (1440×2560 pixels resolution) Super LCD display with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 coating. It has a ‘Liquid Surface’ design with mirror-like reflection, which makes it look a lot like the U Ultra. The smartphone is also the company’s first to come with two digital assistants – Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

Available in two variants based – 4GB RAM/64GB storage and 6GB RAM/128GB storage – HTC U 11 is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC and supports microSD cards of up to 2TB in size. On the camera front, the smartphone includes a 12MP autofocus rear camera with f/1.7 aperture and ‘Dual Pixel’ technology. There is also a 16MP front-facing camera with f/2.0 aperture. HTC says that the U 11’s region-specific availability will commence next week and full distribution will begin in June.