HTC U Ultra and U Play specs, features, UK pricing and release details

HTC has now made its latest smartphones available for pre-order in the UK. The company announced the HTC U Ultra and the HTC U Play about a month ago. Both handsets are set to hit retail stores on March 1.

The HTC U Ultra sports a 5.7-inch Super LCD5 capacitive touchscreen display with a 1,440 x 2,560 resolution and 513 ppi pixel density. The model with 64 GB internal storage comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection while the variant with 128GB memory furnishes a Sapphire crystal glass. The Android 7.0 Nougat-powered HTC U Ultra is backed by a Qualcomm MSM8996 Snapdragon 821 quad-core chipset, an Adreno 530 GPU and 4GB of RAM.

The 12MP primary camera of the U Ultra comes with an f/1.8 aperture, optical image stabilisation (OIS), laser and phase detection autofocus and dual-LED (dual tone) flash. It can record 2160p videos at 30FPS and 720p slow motion videos at 120FPS. The 16MP secondary camera is capable of 1080p video recording.

Some of the features of the HTC U Ultra include the front-mounted fingerprint scanner, accelerometer, gyro, proximity and compass. It also has Quick Charge 3.0 support on its 3,000mAh non-removable lithium-ion battery, which is good for 312 hours of standby time or 26 hours of phone calls.

The HTC U Play equips a 5.2-inch Super LCD5 capacitive touchscreen display with a 1,080 x 1,920 resolution, 428 ppi pixel density and an unspecified Corning Gorilla Glass protection. The HTC U Play is driven by a Mediatek MT6755 Helio P10 octa-core chipset and a Mali-T860MP2 GPU. It comes in two variants: a unit with 32GB storage and 3GB of RAM and a model with 64GB memory and 4GB of RAM.

The 16MP f/2.0 main shooter of the U Play also comes with OIS, laser and phase detection autofocus and dual-LED (dual tone) flash. It can record 1080p videos at 30 FPS. The front-facing selfie snapper is also a 16MP camera.

The U Play packs a 2,500mAh non-removable lithium-ion cell, which can provide about 427 hours of standby time or 15 hours of talk time. Each of the new HTC handsets comes with an external microSD slot that is expandable up to 256GB. No 3.5mm headphone jack is available on either phone.

The HTC U Ultra is offered in various deals. It can be purchased sans SIM at HTC’s official UK online store for £649 (AU$1,050), at Clove for £620 (AU$1,004) and at Unlocked Mobiles for £615 (AU$995). Carphone Warehouse, meanwhile, offers the U Ultra for £650 (AU$1,052), but 24-month contracts are also available which include a £51 (AU$83) per month plan with no upfront cost.

The HTC U Play is available for £399 (AU$645) at the HTC online store, £395 (AU$640) at Clove and £395 (AU$640) at Unlocked Mobiles. Carphone Warehouse sells the U Play for £470 (AU$760) but telco deals – including one that starts at £28 (AU$45) per month for two years – are also available. Both the HTC U Ultra and HTC U Play come in four colours: brilliant black, cosmetic pink, ice white and sapphire blue. No official announcement has been made regarding the Australian pricing and release dates of the two smartphones, but HTC says they are “coming soon.”

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