Earlier this month, HTC unveiled the flagship U Ultra. To many people’s surprise, the phone came in with a Snapdragon 821 processor that was released in 2016, but HTC says this is because the company had been planning the launch of this phone for quite some time.
Qualcomm announced the new Snapdragon 835 chipset at the CES 2017 show in early January – a processor that will be featuring on many, if not all, 2017 Android smartphone flagships. With the HTC U Ultra boasting as one of the go-to phones this year, it doesn’t help in any way when the phone ships with an older processor.
Of course, the phone offers quite an amazing set of specs and features ranging from a roomy 5.7-inch QHD screen that is accompanied by a smaller secondary display on top of it, similar to the LG V20. The phone packs a RAM of 4GB, 64GB of expandable storage and a decent 16MP selfie camera, just to name but a few. But still, all these don’t take away the fact that the HTC U Ultra has an older processor that powers flagship phones released in the second half or rather the final quarter of last year.
The HTC U Ultra has not been released yet and by the time it comes out somewhere in March, many will probably look at as an older phone in the market, similar to the Google Pixel that has the same chipset. But given that HTC had already planned for this device’s release in early 2017 and the fact that Samsung will start the mass production of Snapdragon 835 chipsets somewhere in April, the company’s President of Smartphones and Connected Device, Chang Chialin, has moved in to cool down fears by confirming that an HTC phone powered by this new processor will still be released later in the year.
Since the first batch of Snapdragon 835 processors will be utilized by Samsung’s Galaxy S8, we may see an HTC flagship that uses this processor somewhere towards the end of H1 2017 or in the early stages of the second half of the year. As for now, the release date and other specs are not known.
Since HTC fans are now aware that there is a much better, faster flagship than the HTC U Ultra coming in a few months’ time, will they go for the latter, especially when looking at its massive price tag? Feel free to share your thoughts on this matter via the comments section below.