The prolonged demise of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 has left something of a vacuum in the high-end Android smartphone arena. HTC seeks to fill that empty ecological niche with its U Ultra smartphone and its 2560×1440, 5.7″ display. The phone courageously omits the headphone jack , but packs HTC’s new Sense Companion AI assistant and a second 2″ screen above the primary screen, in a similar fashion to the Touch Bar on Apple’s newest Mac Pro laptops.
The Sense Companion is HTC’s competitor to Apple’s well-established Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Assistant artificial intelligence helpers. HTC says it can do things like remind the you to leave early for work if the weather forecast calls for snow, or make restaurant recommendations when it knows you’ll be taking a trip out of town.
The second screen idea is not an entirely new concept for a smartphone—LG’s V10 and V20 handsets have already sported this feature.
