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

An almost best-of-class camera

If you do remember to use Edge Sense, it will no doubt be to launch the camera (it’s the default, in fact), and HTC has put a great camera in the U11. Users of the U Ultra will be familiar with the specs—a 12MP lens with an f/1.7 aperture, optical image stabilization and phase detection autofocus.

DOUG DUVALL/IDG

The U11’s camera bump might not be as prounouned (left), but it’s just as good as the one in the U Ultra.

Using the same camera isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The U Ultra’s camera was one of the few features that really shined, and the U11’s does as well. Its score in the vaunted DxOMark benchmark is 90, the highest ever handed out to a mobile phone (though, to be fair, the camera quality differences between U11, Pixel and the Galaxy S8 are small).

We put the U11 through a battery of tests against our favorite current camera, the LG G6, which has already bested the Pixel and the Galaxy S8 in our camera shootouts. You can find the full details of our testing here, but the short story is that while the G6 still came out ahead, it was an extremely close contest.

Both cameras produced true-to-life color, and while the U11 struggled a bit with white balance in dark environments, it often resulted in shots that were truer to life.

color2 — The U11 more than held its own against the LG G6, our pick for the best camera phone.

The U11 also performed well when it came to clarity and exposure, and handled bright light and shadows better when shooting in HDR mode. In fact, with the exception of slight pauses when processing HDR and RAW images, the U11 was on par with, or better than, the G6.

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