HTC is officially gearing up for the release of a new Android smartphone, as the company just took to Twitter to confirm that the unveiling of the mysterious device has been set for August 30. The tweet reads “beauty and power meet” on the aforementioned date, but HTC did not reveal the exact name of the phone or any specifications surrounding it. Nevertheless, an image accompanying the tweet did confirm that the model will belong to the “U” series and judging by recent leaks, the OEM currently has only one smartphone planned for release – the U12 Life. As a result, the industry largely expects this handset to be the main focus of the event.
The HTC U12 Life has been the subject of a few leaks and rumors so far, and unlike its direct predecessor launched last December with the U11 Life moniker, the upcoming model is believed to sport a taller display with an elongated 18:9 image format. According to a sketch leaked earlier this month, the HTC U12 Life should feature a vertically aligned dual-camera setup on the back panel, a rear-fitted fingerprint sensor, and two front-facing cameras. The back of the phone might also sport a backplate similar to Google’s Pixel 2 models, but HTC’s smartphone doesn’t seem to push the display boundaries too far toward the edges, at least judging by the said sketch. Much like last year’s model, the HTC U12 Life is expected to fit in the mid-range market, with rumors indicating that it will be equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 636 chipset, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. The display is said to have a 6-inch diagonal and a pixel count of 2,160 by 1,080.
As HTC’s smartphone business has been slowing down lately, a previous rumor suggests that the U12 Life will be an ODM device, meaning that it will be designed and manufactured by a contracted third-party, but will carry the HTC branding and be retailed as such. This has yet to be confirmed by the Taiwanese smartphone maker who earlier this year managed to record its first profitable quarter following a period of decline spanning over nearly three years, though only due to Google’s $1.1-billion financial injection that saw the company hire a significant portion of HTC’s engineering talent.
Beauty and power meet on August 30th 2018. pic.twitter.com/pOVKlEzSGY
— HTC (@htc) August 23, 2018