PC Magazine July 2017

A SOUND CHOICE
The HTC U11 for
Sprint is the best
music phone around,
and its unusual
squeeze sensor is a
fun new way to
interact with a
mobile device. It
features Gigabit LTE
and a fast processor,
and it’s Alexacompatible.
A MARVELOUS MUSIC PHONE
The U11 is the best music phone we’ve tested. Start with the speakers. In
speakerphone or music playback mode, HTC uses a speaker on top as a
“tweeter,” while the main speaker, on the bottom, is a more powerful “woofer.”
The top speaker basically offers a little bit of high-end enhancement, but the
overall effect is more than the sum of its parts—a noticeably richer sound than
on most other phones.
The included earbuds are a treat. HTC includes special Usonic USB-C
earphones that work only with this phone. They use a sonar-like technology to
map your hearing and equalize the phone’s sound to compensate. It’s an
especially effective technology for older ears like mine: With Usonic, I got to
hear a lot more high-end than I usually do, because that part of my hearing is
shot. The earbuds also do a little bit of active noise cancellation when they’re
playing music, but it isn’t active when music isn’t playing.
The U11 has no headphone jack, but HTC supplies a special dongle with a DAC
(digital to analog converter) inside. Paired with super-high-end headphones, I
could hear the difference when compared with the otherwise excellent Galaxy
S8: The U11 has more detailed highs, better texture and shape to sound, and
longer decay. This is the first convincing argument I’ve heard for using a dongle.
One exception to the U11’s audio excellence is that if you rely on wireless
headphones, the phone doesn’t stand apart. It’s even a step behind the Galaxy
S8. With Bluetooth 4.2 rather than Bluetooth 5.0, it can’t do the new trick of
playing to two sets of headphones at once, and the sound quality of Bluetooth
audio is dependent on the encoding scheme, not the phone’s own amp.