Building a $349 mid-range phone as nice as this is a big point of pride for the company, whose spokespeople admit to me that devices like the One A9 were too expensive for what they were. Not every decision the company made sits right with me, though. While there's a spot for a microSD card, it would've been nice to have more than 32GB of built-in storage. And here's the really strange bit: Here in the States, we'll get a version of the U11 Life running HTC's familiar Sense interface on top of Android Nougat. Everywhere else, the U11 Life will run a clean version of Oreo as specified by Google's Android One program. In other words, we're sort of getting shafted on software.

HTC representatives say the decision was ultimately all about timing; the company couldn't bake the Android One build into the US version of the U11 Life without delaying its launch, and I get the impression that HTC really wanted to get this thing out the door. There's no official word on whether the phone will ever be available in the US with stock Android, but hey, one can hope.

We're a little more curious about HTC's next big thing -- the U11+ doesn't count -- but the Life is an intriguing option for smartphone shoppers on a budget. It's not quite a flagship, but it's much closer than we had expected for the price.