Enlarge

In the post-smartphone world—where the market is saturated, sales are down, and a mere £100/$150 can buy a perfectly pleasant device—just what does the premium smartphone maker do? Does it go down the path of Huawei and OnePlus, offering premium materials and components at cut down prices? Does it market its phones with en vogue accessories like VR headsets and smartwatches like Samsung does with its Galaxy phones? Or, like Google and its computer vision-enabled Project Tango, does it go for broke with a new, untested technology in the hopes of creating a coveted platform?

With the new HTC U Ultra and HTC U Play—a pair of all-glass smartphones imbued with the power of a so-called artificial intelligence that are due out in February—HTC is very much going for the latter.

It’s a surprising change of tack after the restrained, but well-received HTC 10, which sought to nail the basics of smartphone design in lieu of any quirky features. According to HTC’s marketing guru Darren Sng, the new U-series (yes, these first two phones are just the start) represent a total “transformation” of the company, combining all-new industrial design and materials with machine learning in a way that HTC hopes will turn it from a “smartphone company centred on your life, to making you the centre of your smartphone.”