There’s no better Android underdog than HTC. Long before Samsung cemented itself as the high-end Android leader, HTC was pumping out innovative devices like the One X and One S in 2012. It followed up with the flagship One (M7), which featured a sleek aluminum unibody design that left a lasting impact on the smartphone world (even Apple took a few notes).
As you’ve probably gathered from the name, the company is also going big with this phone. The U12+ features a 6-inch Quad HD+ (2,880 by 1,440 pixels) Super LCD 6 screen with an 18:9 aspect ratio and HDR 10 support, just like the U11+. You won’t find any notch on this display, though — there’s still a large bezel at the top and bottom. HTC managed to shave down the already minimal side bezels by 1mm, and the phone is also 1.9mm shorter than the U11+.
And if you were wondering, there won’t be a smaller U12 this year. That’s a bit disappointing for anyone with smaller hands, but it makes sense for HTC to focus on a single flagship — especially after the confusing array of U11 models we saw over the last year.
Look a bit closer at the U12+ and you’ll notice some subtle differences from the last model. There are two cameras on the back (which we haven’t seen from HTC since the One M8) surrounded by a pill-shaped enclosure. One is a 12 megapixel wide-angle shooter featuring HTC’s UltraPixel 4 technology, and the other is a 16MP telephoto. As with other dual-camera phones, they’ll let you optically zoom up to 2x and get more bokeh (the gorgeous background blurring in portraits) from your photos.
As you’d expect from a flagship Android phone today, the U12+ is powered by a Snapdragon 845 chip and 6GB of RAM. You’ll also be able to chose from either 64GB or 128GB of storage, and you can expand that with microSD cards up to 2TB.
For the most part, the U12+ seems like a phone built for HTC fanatics, and not something that would tempt people away from Samsung’s Galaxy S9 or the iPhone. There aren’t any major surprises or innovation — just the upgrades you’d expect. You can pre-order the blue U12+ today for $799 (64GB) and $849 (128GB) from HTC’s site and Amazon, while the black model is only available with 64GB of storage.
