Today, HTC announced its new handsets, the U11 Life and the U11+. While both models are certainly interesting, the U11+ looks to have started out life as something different and has an interesting backstory.
According to The Verge, who confirmed with its sources, the U11+ was originally created to become the Pixel XL successor and was the device dubbed 'Muskie'. As you may recall, during the early part of the year, there were various codenames being thrown around for the Pixel successors, and 'taimen' would be the codename for the LG variant, which would eventually go on to become the Pixel 2 XL. While devices that are left in development usually never see the light of day, in this case, Muskie became HTC's U11+, and will now be available to purchase.
Although the exterior of the handset looks quite different than what it would had it been released under the Google moniker, the internals are pretty much intact, and even have nods to Google's Pixel design language - such as the fingerprint reader placed on the rear. While HTC does have a couple handsets with a fingerprint reader on the rear, its more prominent ones have featured it on the front. This is all interesting, but the U11+ will not be made available in the United States initially, and will instead make its debut in Europe on November 20.
Source: The Verge
5 Comments - Add comment