HTC's next flagship is coming on May 16

We have one more arguably major contestant to release a flagship Android phone for the first half of 2017. That contestant is HTC. Past years have not been too kind to the company, so it desperately needs a knock-out with their upcoming HTCU / HTCOcean. The manufacturer just revealed the U will be introduced on May 16.

Rumoured specifications suggest the HTCU will be able to keep up with the flagship pack, sporting a 5.5-inch QHD display, Snapdragon 835 with Adreno 540, 4 GB of RAM (China gets 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage), and a 12 MP rear camera coupled with a 16 MP front-facing shooter. The HTCU is reported to also feature water resistance, IP57 to be exact, and to be running Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box. A USB-C connection capable of fast charging will be found at the bottom of the device, but the headphone jack is gone.

Here is where things get interesting: the phone will have a pressure sensitive side frame, and it’s not for stress relief. HTC“Edge Sense,” what the feature has been dubbed so far, will be used to trigger various functions such as raising the volume, waking up Google Assistant, open the camera, and hopefully, some custom functions. Ten points to Gryffindor HTCfor the creativity. This still leaves us with some open questions, such as “Will third party developers get around this to make it useful in other apps?” and “How will this implementation not get accidentally set off?”

Is this something that piques your interest? What kind of functions do you want to see HTCimplement into the HTCU Edge Sense? Let us know in the comments below.