HTC is ready to blow your mind with its latest flagship, the HTC U12 Plus, and it all starts with the paint job on the outside. Launching in two colors, Ceramic Black and Translucent Blue, the HTC U12 Plus retails for $799 for the model with 64GB of internal storage, or a $50 upgrade to 128GB of flash memory for $849 in total. Both models feature a Snapdragon 845 SoC, 6GB of LPDDR4x RAM, a 3,500mAh battery, and IP68 water and dust resistance. HTC’s tagline for the U12 Plus is “Bigger, Bolder, and Edgier Than Ever,” and it’s clear why from the front. A 6-inch Quad-HD+ Super LCD 6 panel with an 18:9 aspect ratio and HDR10 support is part of the package and features an upgraded Edge Sense 2 on each side.
Edge Sense brought the squeeze to smartphones with last year’s HTC U11, and HTC is upgrading the squeeze functionality this year with more options and a new hand recognition ability that can sense which hand you’re holding the phone in. A quick double tap with your thumb on the side of the device will shrink the screen to that side, making it easier to quickly do something with one hand. What’s particularly nice about Edge Sense is that you can remap any of the gestures to whatever function you’d like, so if you prefer to double-tap to go back, go ahead and do that, or if you want a long squeeze to launch the camera, it’s just a quick setting away.
What’s particularly surprising is HTC‘s use of Gorilla Glass 3 on the body, which not only allows it to do what’s called “3D glass” for naturally curved edges but also provides better scratch resistance than Gorilla Glass 5 that’s used on most devices. On the back is a pair of cameras; a 12-megapixel sensor with 1.4-micron pixels and an f/1.75 lens for the main, and a 16-megapixel secondary sensor with 1.0-micron pixels and an f/2.6 telephoto lens next to it. Dual 8-megapixel cameras with 1.12-micron pixels and f/2.0 lenses are on the front with an 84-degree field of view as well. Check out the hands-on video below to learn more and see it in action, as well as experience those beautiful new colors, and don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel to see our updates as they happen!