Surprise! HTC’s mysterious product launch is a sapphire-covered HTC U Ultra

By Christian de Looper Updated March 20, 2017

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Last week, HTC teased a mysterious new product release, sending us tech-heads into a frenzy about what that surprise would be. Well, the mysterious new product is here — and it turns out it’s a limited edition HTC U Ultra with 128GB of storage and a sapphire-coated display. In other words, we were perhaps a little overly optimistic in our speculation.

No, it’s not the new flagship phone some were expecting, but it’s still a pretty nice offering. If you’re looking to buy the HTC U Ultra for yourself and want only the best of the best, this version of the U Ultra is for you. It’s also not a totally unexpected launch — HTC teased a limited edition version of the U Ultra in January.

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Unfortunately, you may only have access to the new phone if you live in Taiwan — but if you do, you can pre-order the device in any of the four color options for 28,900 New Taiwan Dollars– which equates to around $945. That is a lot of dough, especially when you consider the standard HTC U Ultra costs around $160 less than that, however you get an extra 64GB of storage and early customers will get a leather case that would otherwise cost $100.

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The HTC U Ultra already has some pretty decent specs. The phone comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and a 12MP rear-facing camera. Perhaps most unique about the phone, however, is its secondary display, which is used for notifications. The device also has a microSD card slot — so if you’re only interested in the limited edition version for the extra storage, you may want to consider just getting a microSD card slot instead.

Updated on 03-20-2017 by Christian de Looper: Added news that mysterious product is a limited edition HTC U Ultra.

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Christian de Looper

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Christian de Looper is a long-time freelance writer who has covered every facet of the consumer tech and electric vehicle…

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