If there’s one thing we know for sure about the HTC U, it’s that you’re going to squeeze it. But why?
HTC has launched a new promotional teaser advertisement for the HTC U, the company’s next flagship smartphone. The video, posted to YouTube, ships with a less-than-subtle title of ‘HTC Squeeze the Brilliant U’, and comes captioned with the following statement:
“Natural. Intuitive. Effortless. A new way to interact with your smartphone is coming."
And as you’d expect, the video features a solid 30 seconds of random objects being squeezed. It’s pretty hypnotic, and left at least one journalist desperately groping around his desk for anything squeezable. But that’s beside the point – check out the video:
The working theory is that the HTC U will have a new control input that involves squeezing the sides of the phone. It’s a clear effort for HTC to differentiate itself in an increasingly homogenised smartphone market. Samsung made a similar (and wildly successful) ploy with the introduction of the curved ‘Edge’ style design back in 2015, which has remained on Samsung phones right up until the new Galaxy S8.
It’s not clear exactly what function a phone “squeeze” will perform. Perhaps it will act as the back button, or the Home button, or maybe it will launch the camera or take screenshots. Even better, HTC may choose to make the “squeeze” function customisable, so that the user can decide how it works.
So what else can we expect to see from the HTC U? Well it looks highly likely that the phone will feature Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chipset, as seen on the latest flagship Samsung and Sony phones. It’s also tipped that we’ll see 4GB and 6GB memory variants, and options for 64GB and 128GB of storage. Of course, none of these details have been officially confirmed by HTC, so take them with a pinch of salt.
HTC plans to announce the new HTC U smartphone on May 16, 2017, with the event kicking off at 7am London time – or 2am if you’re in New York. However, the actual event will be held in Taipei, where it begins at 2pm local time. TrustedReviews will be reporting on the events of the day live as they happen, so stay tuned.
