HTC U11 with hands-free Amazon Alexa – Factory Unlocked – Brilliant Black – 64GB

Purchased the HTC U11 in Sapphire Blue and it's gorgeous. I was concerned at first because some Verizon customers were having issues using the phone on Verizon's network. When I received my unit, I went to the Verizon website to their BYOD section. Input my IMEI and it was good to go (there are stickers inside the box containing the IMEI and stuff). It recognized the phone. Then I booted the HTC U11 for the first time. I turned off my HTC 10 and took out the SIM card. Insert it into the U11 and everything worked. Downloaded the HTC Transfer Tool and all my stuff transferred over. Had no problems. Oh, my HD Voice and stuff was already activated. I've read around that that function needed to be on but mine has been on since I don't know when. Lol.Phone is noticably smoother and faster than the HTC 10. Everything is much faster. Oh, games play so much better and smoother as well. Games I've played so far is: Clash of Clans, Bleach Brave Souls, Shadowblood, Pokemon Go, DC Legends, HIT, Mobius Final Fantasy, and Brave Frontier. All phones I've owned always stuttered or lagged in the past but I haven't had any issues with the HTC U11. Guess the SD 835 and the adreno 540 was a huge performance upgrade. I've always been jealous of my brother's old iPhone 5 and iPhone 6S on how smooth it plays games. I'm not a hardcore mobile gamer though. Killing time is what my games are for.I've alway been a long time HTC customer. Owned the Incredible 2, DNA, M7, M8, M9, 10, and now the U11. M8 was my favorite but I'm sure the U11 will soon take over. I've had the Samsung S6 and S7 Edge. Never liked them. Laggy and got hot too quick. The double tap on home button to turn on the camera kept turning on in my pocket and it'll kill my battery life. I have a Nexus 6P and I still use it every now and then. I love the 6P, stock Android UI and it's responsiveness and smoothness but I prefer HTC UI and they're phone design.Can't say too much about features or battery life. I'm sure it'll last me all day since I'm a light/moderate user. I never carry a wall charger or portable charger. Also, I've only used the phone for 3 days so far. Edge Sense is cool. Mine is set to short squeeze for camera and long squeeze for flashlight. I believe it's useful but I don't think I'll ever use it to launch apps or anything.For those worried it's too big, it isn't. But every person has their personal preference.This is my first Amazon review, not sure if I can update this but I will try to within a month or so after I've had this phone long enough.

UPDATEDVerizon Calling Trouble, No worries. I explain how I fixed the problem in my review. I recently switch over from Windows Phone after about 6 years and I'm happy about it. I still like the windows UI the most but it just lacks the apps and I can't deal with that much unproductivity. My life is busier than the limited Windows Phone functionality can handle so I had to do something. I've been looking for something more productive for months now and saw this thing was coming out. Based on the specs and price I knew it was the one I was getting.Now, my first and one of my favorite Windows Phones was the HTC 8X and, oh my, is this thing like it's big brother. Once I first got it I knew it reminded me of something else. I pulled out my old 8X and compared it. They both feel well in the hand and have a lot of the same sleek look. All around, the HTC U11 is a beautiful phone. The baked on glass on the back of the phone will keep the metal underneath looking good for a long time to come.Once I opened the box, I started getting setup and downloading everything under the Sun immediately. I messed with getting everything organized on it for about a day straight. It took a while to learn all the android UI again but it's not wasn't bad.VERIZON FIX:What's funny is I didn't know for 2 days that my calling in/out wasn't working. I'd not tried calling anyone since I got it and had only been texting and using data/wifi for downloading. Once the time came to make a call, it ended immediately. I got online and saw that several others on Verizon were having the same problem. The fix was simple but tedious. First, I called tech support and, of course, got someone who had no clue the phone even existed. "It says it's not available on the network." Next, we get escalated to Tech Support Level 2. This guy had no clue about the phone either and basically said the same thing even though I was explaining to them exactly what I needed. So I had him escalate me to Tech Support Level 3. Oh, wait, there is no level 3. The highest level, 2, knew nothing about the newest phone on the market so I had him connect me to a manager. This was actually excellent and I've never been helped as much by anyone at Verizon. This lady had no clue about the new phone either but was listening to everything I said and was curious about it and got an HTC rep on the phone. He said the phone is compatible with their network. She wanted to get to the bottom of it after that. She told me to go to my local headquarters and get a SIM to see if it was causing the problem and she'd contact me later. I went to the Verizon store after work and got an employee who was clueless about the new phone but was very intrigued after I was telling him all about it. I told him, like I told everyone else, that the SIM needed to have "advanced calling" or "HD voice" activated on it before it is inserted into the phone because there is no way to activate it once in. To activate the feature, you have to put the SIM in a phone compatible with the feature.TL;DR on the Verizon Fix: Put your SIM in a phone that has "Advanced Calling" or "HD audio" capability then put in your new phone. It should activate it on the SIM so your new phone will recognize it. There is a list of "HD Audio" compatible phones online. I guess me linking to it is why my first review didn't go through.My phone, of course, wasn't compatible so I couldn't activate the feature while at the store. I had the salesman give me a new SIM just in case and told him I'd put it in my wife's IPhone when I got home to see if that would activate it. I put it in, got online on our account, and found the section that shows HD voice and it now showed active on that SIM. I put it back in my phone and it work. Voila! Phone's working perfect and I love it now.Things I love about this phone:-Blazing fast-Edge sense squeeze activation, I recommend setting this to a very low squeeze for easier functionality.-Fingerprint scanner, works very good-Water resistant-Great speakers as well as earbuds-Fast charging-Amazon Alexa app works great with Alexa devices and is supposedly getting functionality with voice-Google Assistant-Expandable Memory-Best Cell Camera on the market-USB-C-Aluminum shell with baked on glass. Extremely nice looking.Things I dislike:-The case it came with is pretty chincy but I wouldn't expect anything great as an add-on-A screen protector would be nice to come in the box. I'm tired of all these phones that come with the newest Gorilla Glass but still require a screen protector. Mine got a scuffed area about 1/2" big in the corner in my pocket and I don't even know what could've cause it. It's not very noticeable and will blend in when I put a protector on. It's a shame that a lot of the cases had lead times of a week or more after the phone's release so people have to wait to protect them too.-ADs.....I never saw ads on my windows phone, besides in an unpaid app. Now I'm randomly seeing them on charging screens and stuff like that. I paid for a phone, NOT ADs.-The UI. It's android, what can I say. It works but is cluttered. With this phone, I don't think it matters what UI is on it. It would easily push anything.All in all, this thing is a great piece for a great price. I'll update if I run into any problems.UPDATE: 7-8-17 I've had this phone for about a month now and I have a few gripes but nothing to turn me away from the phone. Unfortunately, I have to send my original back and received my replacement yesterday. There was a spot about a 1/4" in diameter to the upper left of the "back" button that something went wrong with the touch display and caused those pixels to display a lot brighter when touching near that area. When the screen was idle with a white background, you could see it without touching the display. When the screen was idle with a black background, you couldn't see it unless you touched near that area. It is pressure sensitive whatever it is. I was afraid when I got it that I was going to have to spend a ton of time setting everything back up the way I had it. Well, I didn't. The backup/restore went very nicely. I spent the better part of a night messing with backing up and switching over. It's now the next morning and everything is pretty well set up exactly like my original. I had around 80+ apps and stuff it had to download and restore. Everything is in the same place and all settings were correct for the most part.Additional annoyances I can live with:- I've had several people I've called or who have called me that, when our conversation starts, say there is an extremely loud noise that comes across on their side. I'd actually heard it through someone's earpiece and back into their phone once.- I purchased 2 different kinds of screen protectors, both of which don't fit very well, especially with a case.- The notifications and bloatware on these things are downright annoying. Windows was so much more fluid and polished and didn't come with the bloat. It's unfortunate they don't have the apps.- The fingerprint scanner is a bit of a pain with a case/screen protector on. My fingers are always pretty tore up from work so it has a hard enough time reading mine to begin with. I'd prefer to have a physical-press button or just a touch sensor without the fingerprint. I find myself putting in the password too many times after trying the scanner 10 times. It's not to say that it doesn't work well, it does, just not that great for me. It is extremely responsive, and, if you're not doing work that will tear up your fingertips, it will work great for you.- I find myself trying to be extremely careful with this phone all the time. Although it's beautiful because it's glass all the way around, I've watched videos and seen many things online about how fragile they are to bending slightly and shattering the glass on either side of the phone.If I have any more qualms, I'll update in the future.