HTC has officially sent out media invites for its next event on Nov. 2, when it’s expected to reveal the HTC U11 Plus. As is standard, the company has invited the media to an event on that date, but it hasn’t said what new gadgets are on the agenda. However, the invitation prominently features the letter U emblazoned across the top, presumably signaling the next in the company’s U-series of smartphones.
The invitations are made ever more intriguing by the fact that HTC and Google have already announced that the latter is buying the former’s Pixel-making unit. The planned event apparently means that the Taiwan-based tech firm isn’t finished making smartphones after all. HTC chief executive Cher Wang said a while ago that the company plans to reveal some amazing new smartphones in the fall, so it seems that the company doesn’t want to disappoint. Of note. Nov. 2 is an earlier date than what some were reporting last month when Nov. 11 was circulating as the reveal date with sales starting at some point after that.
Smartphones in general have been undergoing a metamorphosis of sorts, with more and more brands adopting the 18:9 aspect ratio. The rumored HTC U11 Plus is expected to be the company’s own 18:9 model with a bezel-less quad-HD+ display with a resolution of 1440 x 2880. The rumor mill attached the “HTC U11 Plus” name to the handset because it’s believed to be a plus-sized version of the standard U11, which was revealed earlier this year.
The smartphone is also expected to run on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset and feature a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera, an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, and internal storage options of 64 gigabytes or 128 gigabytes. The HTC U11 Plus is also rumored to come with 6 gigabytes of RAM and be available in black and silver. It will likely have dust and water resistance, which has now become standard on flagship smartphones.
Naturally, all the buzz around HTC’s planned Nov. 2 event is focusing on the rumored HTC U11 Plus, but the company is also known for its virtual reality headsets, as the HTC Vive has done fairly well since its release. The HTC Vive Focus VR headset has made an appearance in trademark filings in multiple countries, and it’s believed that this will be the company’s next virtual reality headset.
Trademark filings say nothing about the specs the headset might have, but the photos the company provided with the filings seem to suggest that it will be untethered, meaning that it might not require a PC, gaming console or other device. HTC does make mention on its website of a “Standalone” VR headset based on Google’s Daydream and WorldSense. Interestingly, a Google search for the phrase “HTC Vive Focus” brings up the page for HTC’s “Standalone VR headset,” even though the word “Focus” isn’t in the product’s name.
A trademark application for the “HTC Vive Eclipse” was filed in New Zealand recently, which suggests that the company could have more than one VR headset in the works. However, it’s unclear whether next month’s event will also feature any extras of the VR variety, or anything else, for that matter, so we will just have to wait and see.
