HTC is announcing its long-rumored squeezable ‘U’ smartphone on May 16th

HTC has today sent the press emails for an event set for May 16th, and it seems — as is usual with HTC lately — that it’s going to be an entirely online announcement. If this event is for the phone we think it’s for, though, we don’t really have any surprises to look forward to…

The ever-reliable Evan Blass came out with a report just a few days ago detailing the forthcoming phone, codenamed ‘Ocean,’ and it has one crazy feature: Sense Touch, which, as we told you back in March, is HTC’s crazy concept of using the side frame of the phone as an input method. See the tweet below for an idea of what it’s like.

Beyond that, though, the phone is looking to be your average 2017 flagship. The phone will reportedly have a shiny glass and metal design, a 5.5-inch display (with no secondary display), the Snapdragon 835 SoC, 4GB or 6GB of RAM, 64GB or 128GB of storage, and a 3,000 mAh battery. There will be a 12MP rear shooter and a 16MP camera on the front, and… no headphone jack.

Remember the HTC Ocean? (https://t.co/q5ghm3vQ8Z) pic.twitter.com/GtpqowETjM

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) January 8, 2017

On the software side, HTC is reportedly going to shipping the phone with Sense 9, the Taiwanese company’s latest flavor of Android. And since the phone packs such unique hardware, I think it’s safe to say that the software experience is going to be a bit more customized than usual.

As HTC notes in the announcement image you see above, you’ll need to be up pretty early (or late, depending on how you look at it) to catch the livestream for the announcement on May 16th. It’s set for 2AM New York (EST) time. Stay tuned as we learn more about the phone in the coming weeks.