HTC unveils 5.7-inch U Ultra flagship phone with all-glass design, AI assistant, second screen, and no headphone jack; preorders open today for $749
The 5.7-inch U Ultra ushers in a new all-glass design at a distinctly premium $749 price — HTC is getting 2017 off to a flying start …
Context & Ripple Effects
HTC's 2016 flagship, the HTC 10, launched at $699 with conventional specs; the U Ultra moves the line upmarket to $749 and bets on design and software rather than raw hardware — an all-glass body, a built-in AI assistant, and a small second screen above the main display.
The jack removal is the other headline change, and the related coverage shows it sticking: the follow-up U11 keeps the no-3.5mm-jack decision while cutting the price back to $649, so the U Ultra reads as the opening move of a two-part 2017 strategy — premium positioning first, then a cheaper sibling carrying the same design language.
First-order effects
- Buyers preordering today pay $50 more than last year's HTC 10 cost and give up the headphone jack, trading it for the AI assistant and secondary screen as the justification for the premium.
- HTC sets its 2017 flagship anchor at $749, above its own 2016 price point, testing whether design-led differentiation supports higher pricing against better-resourced rivals.
Second-order effects
- The U11 Plus later ships with both Alexa and Google Assistant support, showing the assistant-first bet from the U Ultra expanding across the lineup rather than being a one-off gimmick.
- The U11's $649 launch five months later undercuts the U Ultra while retaining the jack removal, forcing the premium model into an awkward position within HTC's own portfolio.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, flagships consolidate around assistants as the primary control surface — but HTC's own trajectory (the U11 Plus skipping the US entirely while the Vive VR line grows) suggests the phone business alone could not carry the company's premium ambitions.
- The jack removal that began as a controversial flagship decision becomes table stakes across HTC's subsequent lineup, illustrating how quickly individual vendor choices harden into category defaults once the second-mover confirms them.
The trend: Flagship phones are shifting from spec-sheet competition toward assistant-driven interfaces and premium industrial design, with each vendor's jack-removal and AI bets normalizing what was once a risky differentiator.