Did you pre-order the HTC U Ultra?

HTC officially unveiled its flagship U Ultra in January. Your eyes will be caught by the headset at the first glance. The blue color which certainly packed enough features into their newest hero handset to make it a compelling option right out of the gate.

Unfortunately, while HTC was more than willing to unveil the smartphone, along with all of its nitty-gritty details, they weren’t so quick to announce an actual launch date. Arguably the most important part of the whole show, HTC simply announced that it would release the phone to the public sometime in the first quarter of 2017 and left it at that.

And then it opened pre-orders.

I don’t do a lot of shopping online, simply because I hate buying something and not having instant gratification. I will gladly wait to get something if it means I can go to a store and pick it up at the same time I’m handing over my money for it. Sure, this sometimes means I miss out on things, but it’s a hard habit to break. So, simply put, the HTC U Ultra was just not on my radar at all back in January. The fact that they wanted me to pre-order their phone, but not tell me when I’d get it, just made it a no-go.

That isn’t to say that the U Ultra isn’t a worthwhile handset. I’m sure it is to more than a few people out there, and if you’re reading this now and you happen to be one of those folks, I want to know if you pre-ordered the handset back in January. And, more to the point, if you were more than okay just waiting after you pre-ordered for HTC to get around to announcing a shipping date (which it finally has, just today).

Beyond that initial question, I also have to ask about one of the tent-pole features of the U Ultra, and how much of an impact it had on you and your decision to either buy it, or skip it. I’m referring to the U Ultra’s secondary display, just above the main display. This is something we’ve seen in the past, both from LG and Samsung, and I’m still not entirely convinced this is a feature that the masses want.

I can see some of the positives, like always having music controls there, ready to go, without having to push a button or pick up the phone. But, other than that, I just don’t think I’d ever use it.

While functionality is part of it, I also think it has to do with the placement. The U Ultra has a 5.7-inch screen, and then the secondary 2.05-inch screen is above that. I can’t help but think that, for someone who isn’t a huge fan of smartphones with giant displays to begin with, making the smaller screen that’s meant to make accessing apps even faster at the very top would lead to more frustration than anything else.

Would putting that secondary display on the bottom make any difference? It would make accessing the content there easier, at least, but I don’t know if it changes things on a broader scale.

So, did you pre-order the U Ultra by HTC, and, if so, was the secondary display one of the primary reasons you did? On the flip-side, did you skip the U Ultra because you don’t see yourself using a second display? Let me know!