HTC U11 review: A powerful Android phone that knows how to have fun

The Edge Sense squeeze play

Since the U11 is something of a mea culpa responding to the U Ultra’s slippery, oversized frame, it only figures that gripability, if you will, would factor into the phone’s premier feature.

htc u11 screen — When holding your phone with one hand, you can literally squeeze it to quickly launch apps.

HTC’s Edge Sense is basically a shortcut trigger—you literally squeeze the sides of the phone to launch various features, apps and actions. You can set up two different behaviors to trigger: one with a short squeeze and one with a long squeeze. It sounds somewhat silly, but try it for yourself, and you just may appreciate it. I did.

The phone’s set-up process will take you through several Edge Sense orientation screens, where you’ll customize the experience with your favorite app, and practice squeezing. The phone will measure how hard you can squeeze the sides while still maintaining a comfortable grip. You get a surprising level of personalization, and while it’s all a little weird at first, HTC clearly doesn’t want Edge Sense to be a gimmick that you quickly forget about.

The Edge Sense short cuts

Edge Sense runs on top of the entire interface, so it will work anywhere you are, whether you’re in an app or on the lock screen. Since you can set it to launch any app and even some actions (like taking a screenshot or toggling the flashlight), it can reduce multi-step actions to a single squeeze.

htc u11 edge sense — When you activate Edge Sense, you’ll see blue indicators appear on the sides of the screen.

For example, if I’m writing a text message and want to send my recipient a pic of where I am, I only need to squeeze the sides of the phone to launch the camera. Or if I want to ask Google Assistant a question while in my calendar, I can squeeze a little harder. There’s a visual indicator on the sides of the screen to indicate the force of your squeezes, as well as a small vibration once the feature has triggered the action.

After a while, Edge Sense became second nature. Sure, I needed to take a couple trips to the set-up screen to nail down my “squeeze force level,” but once I learned to use my palm rather than my thumb, it became much more comfortable. It’s super fun to use, but it’s also the kind of feature you need to remember to use. As such, I don’t see it ever expanding beyond the U11.