HTC U Ultra announced with two displays, glass body and AI

HTC is now going with the all glass route like Samsung. The company has just unveiled its new HTC U Ultra smartphone which features two displays, similar to the LG V10 and V20.

The main highlight here is the design of the phone. The back glass curves on all four sides to meet the metal frame and the same can be said of the front glass panel as well. HTC says they have developed a unique multi-layered glass manufacturing process which shows multiple colors when exposed to bright light.

Coming to specs, the HTC U Ultra packs a 5.7-inch Quad-HD Super LCD5 display protected by Gorilla Glass 5 on top, then there is the 2-inch 160x1040 pixels secondary display above it which can display notifications, shortcuts or recent apps. Under the hood, you will find the Snapdragon 821 chugging along with4GB RAM and a choice of 64GB or 128GB of internal storage which is also expandable with microSD cards slot. On the software front, the U Ultra runs on Android 7.0 Nougat with Sense UI on top. There's a USB Type-C port to charge the phone or listen to music but no 3.5mm headphone jack. Read More: HTC U Ultra Detailed Specifications

HTC has also added AI to the mix with its Sense Companion software which learns as you use the phone and offers suggestions. So, it will keep a note of your favorite contacts, people whom you interact with and try to show their notifications in the secondary display up top. It will tell you to charge the phone before going to bed, if it thinks that the phone will die before you wake up. There are several other use cases as well.

You get the same 12MP Ultrapixel rear camera here as the HTC 10 with phase-detect autofocus, f/1.8 aperture, laser AF, OIS and 4K video recording. In the front, there's a new 16MP selfie camera with larger pixel size and f/2.0 aperture lens.

The company has packed a rather small 3000 mAh battery on the U Ultra, especially given the large display and powerful hardware. But it does support Quick Charge 3.0, so you will find some solace there. No wireless charging though.

The HTC U Ultra will be available for pre-order starting today from HTC.com priced at $750 (Rs. 51000) or NT$23,900 in Taiwan. There is a sapphire glass variant with 128GB storage as well priced at NT$28,900 (Rs. 62000 or $910). There are several colors to choose from including blue, pink, black and white.