HTC has confirmed the HTC U’s squeezable frame in a recent tweet that the company sent out, reiterating their official statement from this morning about the dates for the announcement event which is scheduled for May 16th. The HTC U, otherwise known as the HTC Ocean, has been hinted to have a touch sensitive frame since last year, but it wasn’t until the beginning of this month when we received some exclusive information about the device’s specs and features that this particular function of the phone became more concrete. The Edge Sensor as it’s being called, will allow users to squeeze the frame for touch sensitive functions like opening applications and such, and users will be able to set the amount of pressure needed with a squeeze to initiate their designated tasks.
While it was shown in the diagrams for the device details of that post, today’s tweet from HTC actually shows the phone being held while the person holding it squeezes the phone making this the first showing of how you squeeze the sensors. You also get a brief glimpse of the phone itself from the bottom of the device, though the screen is off so you can’t really make out any details of the front face such as the bezels. That being said, our earlier post with the device details shows the phone from the front in render format so the design from the front is not really anything that hasn’t been seen before.
In the GIF image below which is the video that HTC posted to their Twitter page, you do also get to briefly see the back of the phone just a little bit and it’s made clear that it will have a glossy back just like the HTC U Ultra and HTC U Play, though again this is something that was already known thanks to a recently leaked image of the device which showed off the front and the back of a Black HTC U model. HTC’s tweet may not show anything new that hasn’t been rumored prior to now, but the fact that it’s coming straight from HTC makes things official, so all that’s left now is to wait for the announcement date to see everything in full.