HTC’s latest flagship phone looks… A lot like it here flagship phones at first glance. It has a glass body, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, 6GB of RAM, and at least 64GB of storage. It’s even missing a headphone jack, like many modern phones (as if that was a feature, not a bug).
But the HTC U12+ has a few distinctive traits. The 6 inch, 2880 x 1440 pixel display almost seems retro, thanks to the lack of a notch, and the phone has dual cameras on both the front and back, allowing you to take portrait style photos with blurred backgrounds with either set of cameras.
HTC has also amped up it’s Edge Sense technology. Not only can you perform some action by squeezing the phone, but there are now touch gestures as well. Oh, and the power ans volume buttons are now basically a solid, non-moving parts. When you press them, the phone reacts, but you won’t feel anything move.
The HTC U12+ is up for pre-order for $799 for a model with 64GB of storage, or $848 for a 128GB version.
The new Edge Sense 2 features include support for squeezing the sides of the phone to control some apps and features, an option to double tap the side of the phone to shrink the screen for single-handed operation, and touch detection so the screen won’t auto-rotate if you’re holding it in portrait mode with touch detected on both the left and right sides of the phone.
The main camera is a 12MP shooter, and there’s a secondary 16MP telephoto camera on the back of the phone. You can also record 4K video at 60 frames per second or 1080p video at up to 240 frames per second for slow motion effects.
The front cameras are twin 8MP wide angle cameras.
Other features include a 3,500 mAh battery, Quick Charge 4.0, stereo speakers, a microSD card slot, a USB 3.1 Type-C port, IP68 water and dust resistance, and support for both Google Assistant and Alexa.
There is no support for wireless charging, despite the glass back.
When the HTC One came out, it was stunning. By far the best looking Android phone on the market. The M8 continued that and improved on it. Since then, it seems like HTC is grasping at straws.
This phone has some good ideas. I like dual cameras, I like them on the front and back even more. I like the anti auto-rotation feature. That will probably be the best (and most overlooked) feature of this phone. But nobody is going to notice that the phone doesn’t mistakenly auto rotate, but boy I hate it when my phone does it. But the rest of sense edge doesn’t make any sense. Buttons that provide zero tactile feedback don’t make sense. Who’s going to squeeze their phone to get it to do things? As for the notch, I don’t like the way the notch looks, but it does provide a really good place for the notification bar. And this phone looks like every other budget android phone on the market. Nothing about this phone screams “I need to buy this now”. Yet another HTC flagship phone I’m going to pass on.