HTC U Ultra Now Available to Buy in India at Rs. 59,990

After its launch in late-February, HTC has made the U Ultra smartphone available to buy in the country on Monday, via the HTC India Store. The U Play, which was launched alongside the U Ultra in India, will go on sale in mid-March.

The HTC U Ultra is priced at Rs. 59,990 (MOP), and while the company had announced the smartphones would be available in Blue, Black, Pink, and White colour variants in the country, it has brought only the Blue and Black colour variants at this time. The highlight of both the HTC U Ultra and HTC U Play is their Sense Companion feature, an AI-based system that learns the user's daily patterns to provide usage recommendations and friendly advice. On the U Ultra, the Sense Companion will display important alerts and notifications on the second ‘ticker-style’ display, which is called the Priority Screen.

Both smartphones come bundled with HTC USonic earphones, which analyse the shape of the user's inner ears with a "sonar-like pulse" to adapt to you. HTC is also boasting of the "liquid surface" curved glass construction.

HTC U Ultra, U Play First Impressions

HTC has launched the U Ultra and the U Play in their dual-SIM (Nano) variants in India, and both smartphones support expandable storage in a hybrid dual-SIM card configuration. HTC is also bundling 1-year insurance that covers liquid damage and any physical damage to the phone. Buyers with Standard Chartered credit or debit cards will also be eligible for 7.5 percent cashback if they purchase either smartphone between March 6 and May 31.

The HTC U Ultra runs Android 7.0 Nougat with Sense UI customisation on top.The smartphone sports a 5.7-inch QHD (1440x2560 pixels) Super LCD display, apart from a secondary 2-inch display with 1040x160 pixels resolution. It is powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 chipset coupled with 4GB of RAM.

The U Ultra has been launched in India in its 64GB inbuilt storage variant, with the company choosing to forego the 128GB model. The storage is expandable via microSD card (up to 2TB). The 64GB variant's display is protected by Gorilla Glass 5, unlike the 128GB variant, which sports a display protected by Sapphire glass.

As for optics, the HTC U Ultra comes with a 12-UltraPixel rear camera with 1.55-micron pixels, a BSI sensor, laser + phase detection autofocus, optical image stabilisation, an f/2.8 aperture, and dual-tone LED flash. At the front, HTC U Ultra sports a 16-megapixel camera with an UltraPixel mode, and a BSI sensor. Other specifications on the HTC U Ultra include 4G LTE with VoLTE, GPS/ A-GPS, Bluetooth v4.2, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, NFC, DLNA, Miracast, HTC Connect, and USB 3.1 Type-C connectivity options.

The HTC U Ultra bears a fingerprint sensor on the Home Button, HTC BoomSound Hi-Fi edition stereo speakers, Hi-Res Audio support, as well as 3D Audio recording support with 4 microphones. It is powered by a 3000mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0. It's rated to deliver up to 26 hours of talk-time and up to 13 days of standby time.