Want to launch the camera on the HTC U11? Just squeeze.

When the phone's pressure-sensitive sides register your tightened grip, it'll open the app you've programmed in.

Say you've squeezed the camera app open. You can squeeze again to take a picture. A long squeeze might open and close the flashlight, or toggle Wi-Fi or a voice recording. Or another app of your choice.

What's going on is an entirely new way to interact with a phone. Called Edge Sense, this feature marks the first time any phonemaker has used touch like this. For HTC, a company that has itself felt the squeeze from larger rivals such as Samsung, Apple and LG, the U11's grippy new feature presents an opportunity to step out of others' shadows with an industry first.

Giving a phone pressure-sensitive sides is an incredibly interesting innovation, and one that raises a lot of questions: is this a natural way to open shortcuts, or is it better suited to some other task? Will it be accurate or will mispresses abound? Is it a useless gimmick, or the start of exciting things to come?

I don't have an answer to that yet, but after my brief time with the phone, I did try out many of the launch options, and I like that an animation of squeezed-in sides lets you know the feature's working. I found the motion easy to execute, but I did sometimes long-squeeze when I meant to short-squeeze.

I think muscle memory will take care of that down the road. I also think this method of app-launching would only be useful for the apps I open all the time (which takes that voice recorder out of the running).

The bigger question for HTC is if the U11's fresh look and feel, and high end specs are enough to make a dent in Samsung and Apple's overwhelming lead -- squeeze feature or no. From what I've seen of the U11 so far, its premium hardware stands the best chance of any HTC phone in quite awhile.

The rest will come down to performance, and how well HTC can gets its phone in front of buyers.

Price and release date