HTC U press invite
Squeezy does it HTC

HTC has sent out media invites to a global launch event of its next flagship smartphone, taking place on 16 May. The HTC U – the spiritual successor to last year's HTC 10 – will be unveiled at simultaneous events happening in London, New York and Taipei at 07:00 BST.

The invite sent out by HTC only offers a few hints about its upcoming phones, although they're pretty significant ones. The first is the name of the flagship phone, which much as we assumed will retain the 'U' moniker given to this year's HTC U Ultra and HTC U Play.

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More interesting is the fact that the invite also confirms the handset will feature pressure-sensitive input, most likely contained in the frame. Previous reports have labelled this Edge Sense and suggest that sensors surrounding the phone's frame will allows users to perform certain actions – such as taking a photo, answering calls and launching apps – by squeezing or swiping from the edges.

Needless to say there will have to be some practical implementations behind it if the feature is to be anything more than a gimmick, particularly when the HTC U has rival handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S8, LG G6 and Sony Xperia XZ Premium to contend with.

That said, we're hearing rumours of a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, 5.7in QHD screen and a new version of HTC's Sense 9 overlay to play with, so the HTC U sounds like it will at least have the technical chops to go toe-to-toe with this year's Android heavyweights. We only have a few weeks to wait until we find out for sure.