HTC U Ultra review: gorgeous design, great performance, and rich stereo audio, but no headphone jack, below-average battery life, and it's expensive
Sam Rutherford / Tom's Guide : Tweets: @philipmichaels Tweets: Philip Michaels / @philipmichaels : The HTC U Ultra is nice, @samrutherford says, but something's missing. http://www.tomsguide.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The U Ultra arrived via HTC's January unveiling as a $749 all-glass flagship with an AI assistant and a second screen — and, notably, no headphone jack. Sam Rutherford's Tom's Guide verdict now lands on that price: the design, performance, and stereo audio are real strengths, but the missing jack, below-average battery, and cost add up to a hard sell.
It repeats a familiar HTC pattern. The One A9 was easy to recommend at $399 but not at $499, and the same reviewer math — good hardware undermined by price and battery — is what keeps dogging HTC's premium ambitions while Samsung's Ultra line sets the benchmark.
First-order effects
- Buyers shopping a $749 Android flagship now have a credible reason to skip HTC: the review concedes the U Ultra's audio and build but flags battery life and the dropped headphone jack as deal-shaping compromises.
Second-order effects
- HTC's next moves show the pressure: months later the U11 leaned on Edge Sense squeeze controls to differentiate rather than design, and by 2018 the U12 Plus still shipped without the 3.5mm jack or even an adapter — doubling down on the exact trade-off this review penalized.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — strong audio heritage paired with premium pricing and battery/jack compromises across the A9, U Ultra, and U12 Plus — HTC's flagship line risks being priced out of consideration, leaving Samsung's Ultra models as the default Android super-flagship reference point.
The trend: HTC's flagships keep pairing premium prices with reviewer-flagged compromises, steadily ceding the Android halo market to Samsung's Ultra line.