HTC's new Desire 22 Pro is a surprise release from the Taiwanese phone maker that's billed as the perfect companion for your journey into the metaverse, but there's more on offer here than just the latest buzzwords.

The company's newest device comes with a few curious selling points. HTC is calling it the "ideal companion to Vive Flow" (the company's VR "glasses"), meant to serve as a gateway into immersive experiences and the "Viverse" – HTC's own suite of metaverse-focused apps.

Blockchain-based features are rife on the Desire 22 Pro too. It  comes with something called Vive Wallet, so you can keep any owned NFTs in check and monitor the performance of your cryptocurrencies, while Viverse Market lets you buy stuff in the metaverse.

It's not actually clear what metaverse-related benefits this latest HTC Desire has over any other smartphone and it's very possible that the company is just piggybacking off these terms currently dominating the technological zeitgeist.

Because of these features, it sounds as though HTC is really targeting the kind of pro-Blockchain user who owns crypto or NFTs, has an interest in the metaverse, and hangs on the latest Web3 announcements. 

But given how divisive these new internet trends are proving, such features could equally put off certain users; some people have concerns about the potential environmental impact of blockchain, as well as the startling instability of crypto, and a device that contributes to or centers around these endeavours would then be best avoided.

Taking such a stance would be doing the Desire 22 Pro a disservice, as behind this buzzword-laden mobile, actually sits a tempting cheap phone.

Analysis: the specs aren't bad

If we'd heard of the HTC Desire 22 Pro without words like 'Viverse', 'cryptowallet' and 'Blockchain', we'd actually consider it a fairly competitive mobile that straddles the gap between budget and mid-range.

It costs £399 (roughly $490 or AU$700, though it's only up for pre-order in very specific countries, right now), and for that money you get a nice smattering of specs.

There's a 6.6-inch FHD+ 120Hz display, three rear cameras (including a 64MP main sensor), 8GB RAM paired to 128GB storage, a 4,520mAh battery – oh, the phone has wireless charging; which is something you really don't see in devices at this price.

It's not a perfect mid-range offering, however, with the Snapdragon 695G chipset potentially leading to a slower user experience than equivalent rivals. Plus, given that HTC isn't exactly a smartphone powerhouse anymore, it's not clear how many, if any, Android OS updates users can expect.

Still, a phone with these specs and at this price point would normally be something we'd hesitantly recommend, but if anything, the addition of Viverse and Blockchain branding thrown about the place make it a much tougher sell. Perhaps this won't find its way onto our list of the best phones after all.

We've not heard much from HTC in terms of new smartphones in recent years, but the Taiwanese company could be making a dramatic return to the market with a foldable phone, according to a newly discovered patent.

As spotted by LetsGoDigital, the filing shows a mobile device that very definitely has a hinge in the middle, with the display apparently folding outwards so that it's still visible (in two halves) when the phone is closed.

There's not much to glean from the patent documentation, aside from some detailed sketches showing how the hinge mechanism works. It looks as though the fold would be horizontal across the middle, in the style of the Motorola Razr.

• Samsung is working on another foldable
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The display would adapt as the device is folded, explains the patent, continuing to show information even when it was shut. That's as you would expect, and no other particularly surprising components are mentioned in the documentation.

HTC changed its CEO around this time last year, and the new boss has gone on record as saying that he wants to make the company's smartphone division profitable again. Perhaps a folding phone is the sort of premium gadget that might help in that endeavor.

As with any patent application though, it's worth remembering that these filings only show us what manufacturers are thinking about and experimenting with – there's no guarantee that these products will ever see the light of day.

If we do see a foldable phone from HTC within the next year or two, it might try and gain some market share with a more affordable price point. The few phones that we've seen from HTC in recent times have been more mid-range than high-end.

And such a device would of course have plenty of competition: Samsung now has two foldable phones on the market, the Galaxy Fold series and the Galaxy Z Flip series, while Motorola has already put out two versions of its revamped Razr phone.

• iPhone Flip: what we want to see from Apple's foldable iPhone

Via Phandroid

HTC launching a phone has become a rare occurrence despite the company once being a massive force in the world of Android, but it’s just launched not one but two new handsets, including its first 5G one.

The HTC U20 5G is the 5G phone in question, and aside from speedy mobile data it’s a mid-range handset, but with a lot to like.

There’s a 6.8-inch FHD+ LCD screen, a Snapdragon 765G chipset, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, a microSD card slot, a 5,000mAh battery, Android 10, and a quad-lens rear camera, with a 48MP f/1.8 main sensor, an 8MP f/2.2 wide-angle one, a 2MP f./2.4 depth sensor, and a 2MP f/2.4 macro one.

• There are lots of 5G phones
• Check out our guide to the best smartphones
• HTC handsets used to compete with the best Samsung phones

There’s also a 32MP camera on the front in a punch-hole, and the HTC U20 5G has a near all-screen design, with just a bit of bezel below, while around the back there’s a fingerprint scanner.

Alongside this HTC has also launched the HTC Desire 20 Pro, but this phone only packs 4G, so it’s a little less exciting.

It has a 6.5-inch FHD+ LCD screen, a Snapdragon 665 chipset, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, a microSD card slot, a 5,000mAh battery, Android 10, the same quad-lens camera setup as the HTC U20 5G, and a 25MP camera on the front. It also sports a similar design, albeit with a patterned back where the HTC U20 5G’s is plain.

The bad news with both of these phones is that so far they have only been launched in Taiwan, and pricing details even for that region haven’t been confirmed.

It’s not clear exactly when the phones will get a wider launch or where they will land, but a spokesperson for HTC told TechRadar that "at this time, the devices will be available in Taiwan, but we will look to launch in additional markets later this year.” So it sounds like they might be made available in more regions before the end of 2020.

• Everything you need to know about 5G

Via XDA Developers

If you thought HTC was done with phones, you'd be wrong. Following reports the once-great phone manufacturer may launch a 5G phone at some point this year, it's now shown of its first new handset of 2020. Say hello to the HTC Wildfire R70.

This isn't the HTC flagship you may have been hoping for though, with this handset very much sitting at the low- to mid-range end of the market.

Measuring in at 8.9mm thick and weighing 186g, the R70 will be available in blue and black color options. 

It promises a decent enough specs sheet brandishing a 6.53-inch, 720 x 1560 pixels HD screen with a triple rear camera setup made up of a 16MP main camera that’s accompanied by two 2MP depth of field cameras to help you better capture close ups and get that bokeh effect on your pics. Out front, you’ve got an 8MP camera to take care of those selfies.

• Check out our hands on: Samsung Galaxy S20 review

Limited release for now

It’s packing some good power too with a 2GHz octa-core MediaTek Helio P23 processor to ensure Android 9 Pie is running smoothly. That's matched with 2GB of RAM (pretty much the lowest acceptable amount these days) and 32GB of storage, which can be expanded by an additional 256GB with a microSD card.

Other notable features include a fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone, 3.5mm headphone jack and dual LTE  support.

In the battery department, you’re getting a big 4,000mAh capacity battery that HTC says will deliver two days usage, though it’s packing a micro USB port as opposed to the newer USB Type-C standard when you need to top up that battery.

Currently, it's only set for release in India and Thailand, while no pricing has been confirmed as yet for the affordable option. The Wildfire R70 will go on sale over the next few weeks for those who like the sound of living that HTC smartphone life.

• HTC is launching its first 5G phone sometime this year

Via PocketNow

HTC used to be a huge name in smartphones, but in recent years it's struggled, and has almost completely abandoned the market save for launching the occasional niche device like the HTC Exodus 1 and 1S. But a more mainstream smartphone from the brand might be coming soon, and it’s set to include 5G.

HTC’s CEO Yves Maitre said in an interview (reported by Chinese news site UDN) that the company will launch its first 5G smartphone at some point in 2020.

That’s all he said on the subject, but given that 5G is still mostly only found in flagships, it’s likely that this will be a high-end device.

• The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra could be one of the best 5G phones yet
• We're expecting lots more 5G phones throughout 2020
• Read our full HTC Desire 12s review

That doesn’t necessarily make it mainstream of course. It’s possible that 5G will be packed into another blockchain phone like the Exodus 1, but it would seem odd to debut such a premium feature on such a niche handset, so there’s a good chance this will be a more conventional smartphone.

High or low?

In other words, this could be the HTC U13, or whatever HTC’s successor to the HTC U12 Plus ends up being called. On the other hand, HTC might choose to launch a more affordable 5G handset to avoid directly competing with big names, as analysts speaking to Forbes late last year predicted. That too could be exciting though, as it would make 5G more accessible.

And whatever this 5G phone ends up being, it shows that HTC isn’t quite done with smartphones yet – although whether this will be the company's swansong phones-wise, or a serious bid to relaunch it as a major player, remains to be seen.

It may well depend on how well this upcoming phone sells, and in the face of the Samsung Galaxy S20 and – later this year – the iPhone 12, the competition is certainly going to be tough, especially if HTC's 5G phone does end up being high-end.

• Take a look at our best phones list

Via Engadget

The last decade has changed the face of mobile phones. Major milestones have seen the introduction of brand new, game changing technologies as well as the death of big brands and operating systems.

Back in 2010, we were getting excited about the HTC Desire and iPhone 4. Now, we're talking about foldable devices, the introduction of 5G and some of the most high-tech pieces of kit you could imagine in your pocket.

While the noughties may have seen the introduction of the smartphone, manufacturers have taken devices to new heights in the last 10 years. That's why sitting down and deciding on the best phone of the decade has been difficult task.

We've been reviewing smartphones for the entire decade and beyond, so we put our collective heads together to come up with a top five list of the most impressive, influential and trendsetting devices of the last 10 years.

Below you can see how we decided on the list - Editor in Chief of TechRadar (and ex-Phones Editor) Gareth Beavis and Phones Editor James Peckham take on this task and try to come up with a fair list of the best devices.

There's one clear winner though, which if you read on below you'll find out all about:

5. OnePlus 3

The Chinese manufacturer rocked the mobile market with its OnePlus One ‘flagship killer’ in 2014, but with limited availability and a tepid follow-up in the form of the OnePlus 2, it wasn’t until 2016 and the OnePlus 3 when the firm really made its mark on the industry.

The OnePlus 3 was the company’s first all-metal handset, instantly making it look and feel like a true top-tier device. It boasted a flagship chipset, plenty of RAM and a large 5.5-inch display. The real kicker, however, was the price. 

The OnePlus 3 cost around half the price of the iPhone 7, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, HTC 10 and Sony Xperia X - and showed the world that you didn’t need to pay through the nose to bag yourself a smartphone which had plenty of grunt and a premium design.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and that’s certainly the case with the OnePlus 3. It set the standard for “affordable flagships” and since its introduction with seen the likes of Honor, Xiaomi, Oppo, Alcatel, Realme and more follow a similar formula - with varying degrees of success.

In recent years, even the established names have looked to take a leaf out of the OnePlus playbook, with handsets like the iPhone XR and Samsung Galaxy S10e making an appearance.

The OnePlus 3 allowed us to dream. It allowed us to believe. It allowed us to own a premium handset without plunging us into crippling debt. And for that, we salute you.

Written by John McCann, Phones Editor at TechRadar 2016-2019

4. iPhone 4

The iPhone was something of a joke among the ‘true’ tech fans of the world until this model came along - the plastic backs of the 3G and 3Gs, with the limited screen quality and poorer cameras did it no favors.

However, one feted trip to the bar and one lost iPhone later, the world glimpsed the new iPhone 4 for the first time. Whether this was intentional or not, we’ll never know, but the hype it generated was off the charts.

Why? Well, the Retina display was higher-res than anything Apple had made until that point - and of higher quality and richness too.

The camera was boosted, taking faster and sharper pictures that really shone on the new screen tech. But that’s not the reason it’s on this list - it’s the design. The industrial, metal rim and glass back were a real statement that Apple was serious about the smartphone game, and the improved power and upgraded design were shining symbols of that.

Was it the best phone on the market? Hell no, there were tonnes of more capable devices. But Apple’s burgeoning App Store, slick design and easy interface on the iPhone 4 was the moment the iPhone became more mainstream in critics’ eyes - and that led to the domination you see today.

Written by Gareth Beavis, Phones Editor at TechRadar 2009-2016

3. Moto G

The Moto G is by far the least impressive handset on this list, but it changed what phones were capable of. It didn't have an impact on the top-end like the HTC One M8 or the iPhone 5S in 2013, but instead it changed the bottom of the market.

Motorola made a conscious effort to supply impressive devices at the cheaper end of the market. It changed what we could expect from the low-end handsets that were quite often terrible and difficult to recommend to anyone looking to save money.

The Moto G came along in 2013, and it just worked. Sure, it didn't have an impressive rear camera or phenomenal power inside, but it did enough so it just actually worked well.

Finally, there was a phone on the market that cost less that we could wholeheartedly recommend to anyone that wanted a more affordable device.

From there, the company took the Moto G series to new heights introducing new camera technology as well as new variants that have their own specific impressive features.

Take the Moto G7 Power with its phenomenal two day battery life. Without the Moto G, that phone wouldn't have been possible. 

The Moto G won't go down as the best phone of the 2010's, but it helped change the face of one of the most interesting areas of the whole phone industry.

Written by James Peckham, Phones Editor at TechRadar 2019-now

2.  Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge

It's easy to forget how exciting the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge was. We'd seen the bent screen technology debut the year before in the Galaxy Note Edge, but this was the second iteration and it was vastly improved for the flagship S7 phone.

The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge was a five star handset on TechRadar. In fact, it was the last five star handset review in the phone space on the site, and we haven't seen anything worthy of that accolade on since it debuted in 2016.

It wasn't just the bendy screen technology that resonated with us though. The screen was bigger because of that curved tech, and it was just a genuinely well built phone with a beautiful glass design.

There was a bigger battery that allowed for the phone to last for a solid day, plus the camera was one of the best that we'd seen on a phone at the time and by far the greatest Samsung had introduced.

At the time, we said, "we could always want more from our handsets… but if you're looking for a well-designed, powerful phone that actually packs some useful day-to-day features, the Galaxy S7 Edge is the one to go for."

Written by James Peckham, Phones Editor at TechRadar 2019-now

1. HTC One M8

There are some moments in a tech journalist's career when you know you’re seeing something that absolutely represents the very best of the best - holding the HTC One M8 for the first time was one of them.

HTC, in the early part of this decade, was the big challenger to Apple’s iPhone dominance, with the Desire being the first true rival from the Android stable. And while Samsung’s resources and budget meant it started to pick up momentum, HTC’s rebooted ‘One’ line of phones was still the critics’ choice for so many reasons.

The ‘original’ One (let’s forget about the confusing One X, S and V that preceded it) was launched in 2013, and it showed that HTC was a brand still to be reckoned with - the metal chassis, the brilliant low-light camera and front-firing BoomSound speakers were revolutionary, and the software made the very most of Android.

Fast forward a year, and the ‘tricky second album syndrome’ was all reviewers could talk about. Would HTC be able to build on an almost perfect phone? What headroom was there left?

The One M8 (ridiculous name aside) was proof that perfection could be improved upon. The upgraded screen, speakers and addition of a second lens were big jumps forward (how many phones today have a single lens?) but it was the refined, polished and just more impressive feel of the phone in the hand that made it one of our top phones of all time.

Sure, it might not have dramatically exceeded the specs of the previous model, but that was a revolutionary device - the One M8 showed that it’s possible to bring amazing refinement and improvements in key areas, and that’s why it’s still a phone we’d love to see rebooted and brought into the 2020s.

Written by Gareth Beavis, Phones Editor at TechRadar 2009-2016

• The phones we're looking forward to in 2020

From the iPhone-rivaling HTC Desire to the beautiful HTC One (M7), HTC has created some brilliant phones over the years, which makes it all the more disappointing that the company is now a barely-there presence in the smartphone space. But it could be planning a big return.

Drew Bamford, the head of HTC Creative Labs, tweeted a simple question: “Which classic @htc phone would you like to see us bring back with today's technology?”

It’s a question that could hint that HTC is indeed planning to bring back a classic, perhaps in a similar way to how Motorola recently resurrected the Razr range with the foldable Motorola Razr 2019.

This could just as easily be a bit of fun, and there's no certainty the company has plans to look to its past for inspiration, so don’t get too excited. That said, TechRadar’s own Gareth Beavis had some ideas of what he’d like to see if a rebooted HTC phone ever does arrive.

• Read our full HTC Desire 12s review
• Lately, HTC has seemed more focused on things like the HTC Vive
• Could a rebooted HTC handset make our list of the best smartphones?

What TechRadar would love to see

Beavis' suggestions included using micro oxidized aluminum from the HTC One S for the construction of the phone, which would be a nice change from the glass backs found on most current handsets.

That could then be paired with top tier power, like the HTC Hero offered at the time, plus software that’s open and accessible enough for the hacker community to use, so the handset can hopefully have the cult appeal of something like the HTC HD2. And how about some of the improved battery life we started to see from more recent HTC handsets?

He argued that it should also have some of HTC’s iconic features, such as the company’s UltraPixel camera technology, and BoomSound speakers (but perhaps with a Sonos partnership for a richer ecosystem). Plus a rebooted version of HTC Sense, which was once one of the best Android overlays.

Were HTC to use all these ideas it wouldn’t so much have a new version of a single handset on its hands, rather it would have a greatest hits device, taking elements from many phones of its past.

And were HTC to look backwards that would perhaps be the best approach, since the smartphone world has moved on, so rehashing a single phone, even with modern specs, may not be enough.

But if HTC could capture the essence of all its past innovations and successes in a smartphone built for 2020. Well, then we might have an HTC phone we could get excited about again.

• After the death of crypto, is a second HTC Exodus blockchain phone viable?

If you're looking to buy the HTC Desire 12, Desire 12 Plus or Desire 12s in the UK you may have trouble finding them, because sales of the handsets are to be suspended.

Why? The handsets have been found to be infringing an IPCom (an IP management and patent licensing company) patent after the firm tested the Desire 12 earlier this year and found it to not be using a previously agreed workaround.

• The Galaxy Note 10 is about to launch
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This story starts back in 2015, when IPCom took the phone maker to court, claiming HTC had "infringed upon IPCom's Patent 100A, a standard essential patent (SEP), which governs how a handset connects to a network, prioritises emergency calls, and adheres to internationally recognised telecoms standards."

The court ruled in IPCom's favour and HTC agreed to a workaround sanctioned by the court for all future handsets. Fast forward to 2019 and it appears that workaround is missing from the Desire 12, and potentially other HTC smartphones.

At the time of writing the HTC Desire 12 is still on sale at Littlewoods, Very and Amazon, which IPCom believes is because the products are being distributed from warehouses outside of the UK - so the devices may not ever be completely unavailable.

HTC's own website, however, doesn't have stock of any of its devices listed. You also won't find any HTC handsets available at EE, Vodafone, O2, Three or Carphone Warehouse, although these retailers had stopped selling the Taiwanese firm's devices before this patent dispute broke.

HTC's smartphone business has been going through a trying time recently, and as a result it's seeing its devices ranged in fewer places, but this latest development will do it no favours.

HTC's 5G home hub router isn't affected by this patent dispute and will remain on sale.

Xiaomi in the cross hairs

Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi may find itself in hot water very soon as well, as IPCom claims the recently released Mi Mix 3 "has also been found...to utilise the patent, and which is currently on sale in a number of retail outlets. 

"As a result, IPCom has filed a complaint in the UK High Court against Xiaomi, seeking relief against the Chinese giant unless it enters into a reasonable licence agreement." 

Pio Suh, MD at IPCom added "we’re in conversation with the team at Xiaomi and hope to conclude the matter and avoid it going the way of HTC."

A Xiaomi spokesperson has told TechRadar "Xiaomi is assessing the situation and will take all necessary actions that we deem appropriate. Currently Xiaomi will not comment on IP Com's allegations, until we know more."

It's currently not clear whether the suspension of sales of HTC and Xiaomi smartphones could spread to other countries. We have contacted all parties for further information and will update this article when we know more.

• Google Pixel 3 users are reporting shaky photo and video stabilization

The smartphone industry has a lot to thank HTC for; the One M7 was a classic. The original Desire was integral in bringing Android to the masses, and even in recent years, it has impressed us with the likes of the HTC U11.

Unfortunately, though, while its VR business is thriving with the excellent HTC Vive range, its smartphone business is just scraping by, and nowhere is this more evident than in the HTC Desire 12s. 

For a phone that costs the same as great alternatives like the Realme 3 Pro, Honor 10 Lite or Moto G7 Power, you get an under-powered experience and a single camera, not to mention a dated version of Android. 

On paper, it’s a bit of a bust from the get-go, but what’s the phone like to use in reality?

Price and release

• Available in the UK for £179
• US availability TBC

The HTC Desire 12s can be picked up for £179 (around $215/AU$315) right now SIM-free with 32GB of storage in the UK.

There’s a 64GB version too, and while it isn’t as widely available right now, it can be picked up for about £199 (roughly $240/AU$355) if you shop around. We’ve had no word on US or Australian availability.

Design and screen

• Comfortable in-hand feel
• Plastic body with striped back
• HD LCD display performs well

The HTC Desire 12s, which is available in Charcoal Black or Crystal Silver, isn’t a bad looking or feeling phone. 

Its plastic body sits well in the hand, feels solid, the screen is a comfortable size - not too big and not too small at 5.7 inches. It also has all the buttons we need, and a headphone jack.

Having said that, at the bottom of the phone there's a micro USB port, alongside a mono speaker, two tell-tale low-end elements.

On the right side there's a power button, on the left there's a volume rocker and around the back there's a single camera and a fingerprint scanner. The scanner is well placed and easy for a fumbling finger to find.

The HTC Desire 12s’ plastic body has a high-gloss finish across the sides and the top portion of the back. The bottom two-thirds of the back sports a horizontal striated pattern. This does a good job of repelling fingerprints compared to the glossy part.

It definitely isn’t a super-premium finish, but we wouldn’t expect it to be given the price of the HTC Desire 12s; so while we don’t love it, we don’t hate it either.

The 5.7-inch LCD screen sports an 18:9 aspect ratio and 720 x 1440 resolution. This definitely isn’t a best-in-class display, with the likes of the Honor 20 Lite ramping things up to Full HD.

It does still manage to deliver fair viewing angles, even if the color balance leans towards blue hues, and while it isn’t the sharpest screen in the shop with a pixel density of 282 pixels-per-inch, it showcases websites, the UI and your media about as well as we’d expect a sub-$250/£200 phone to do. It’s also bright enough for comfortable viewing outdoors, which is great.

Battery life

• 3,075mAh battery
• Poor battery performance
• Power saving modes in settings

While the HTC Desire 12s may be off to a good start, battery life is the first area it drops the ball. We usually find with most mid-range and lower phones, battery life is that bit better than flagships as they have less demanding hardware draining the battery dry.

In turn, with its very entry-level Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 chipset and 3,075mAh battery, anything short of a full day would have been a massive disappointment. 

The reality wasn’t great; a 6am start left us with 16% juice left in the tank by 17:45, meaning you can expect little more than 13-14 hours of regular use from the phone.

We ran our 90 minute, full HD video test on the handset, with screen brightness on full and accounts syncing over WiFi in the background. The HTC Desire 12s dropped 19%, ending up on 81% after the video. This isn't a terrible result, and we've certainly seen worse, but it's still on the poorer performance side.

There are power saving features within the settings, which you can turn on automatically or manually, but unless you’re a very light user who gets the HTC Desire 12s for a really great price, its battery performance alone could be enough of a strike against it to dissuade you from picking one up.

Camera

• 13MP lenses on both front and back
• Disappointing overall performance
• Reasonable HDR mode

The Desire 12s camera setup consists of two 13MP cameras, one on the front and one at the back. These feature apertures of f/2.2 and f/2.0 respectively and both sport LED flashes.

Shooting modes include Auto, Sports, Landscape and Panorama. You can toggle HDR on or off, but there’s no auto-HDR feature. As for shooting resolutions, it captures 4:3 photos at up to 13MP, and video at up to Full HD. 

Performance from the main camera isn’t bad if you can hold your hand still enough, your subject doesn’t move, and the lighting is excellent. If any of those variables fail to align, things go downhill, and you can expect a soft shot with middling detail.

Once you take your shot, there’s a noticeable period of processing time, and pinching and zooming around your picture also results in noticeable amounts of stutter.

In low light, noise creeps in very readily, which is what we’d expect from any device that costs what the HTC Desire 12s does. That said, it doesn’t compete with the best camera phones in its class like the Honor 20 Lite and Realme 3 Pro, which have dedicated night modes.

It isn’t all bad; fire up the HDR feature, which thankfully works across both the front and rear cameras, and in almost every condition we threw at the phone, it produced better-looking pictures, though this isn’t enough to make the camera competitive at the phone’s price.

The one caveat is in scenes with a lot of dark colors - the HDR effect can look very pronounced, as illustrated in the image of the black cat, below.

Video, which is recorded at a maximum resolution of Full HD at 30fps, or 720p at 60fps, looks okay. 

There aren’t additional video modes like slow motion, and without image stabilization it doesn’t cope too well with hand shake, however, detail captured is fair and if you can get the phone on a surface or a tripod in good light, you can get some decent-looking footage.

Camera samples

Interface and reliability

• Runs Android 8
• Minimal bloat
• Noticeable slowdown

The HTC Desire 12s runs Android 8 with HTC's Sense UI over the top. Android 8 is a dated version of Google’s operating system, so it isn’t off to a great start from a future-proofing point of view. That said, the phone will still deliver excellent app support.

The core UI experience revolves around a home screen that can be populated by app shortcuts and widgets. There’s a 'BlinkFeed' screen to the left, which showcases news and social media updates, and there’s an app drawer too. Pull down from the top of the screen to access the Desire 12s’ notifications tray and quick toggles.

While HTC’s Sense UI doesn’t feel fresh, having not changed much in recent years, it’s simple to get to grips with and is streamlined - there’s virtually no bloatware pre-installed. Unfortunately, the experience is fundamentally under-powered, stuttering and slowing down when multi-tasking across apps.

So while we don’t have any major issue with HTC’s Sense UI, the experience isn’t where it needs to be on the Desire 12s, given what competition like the Realme 3 Pro and Redmi Note 7 offer.

Multimedia and specs

• 3D games are almost unplayable but basic games work well
• Basic specs and benchmark score
• Includes NFC

Given how under-powered the Desire 12s is, it isn’t a great phone when it comes to gaming. 3D titles border on unplayable, though basic 2D games are handled well.

On the plus side, the screen looks good, so video playback is a treat, and while the phone’s mono speaker is easy to cover up, the sound it produces is loud and you can use wired headphones thanks to the fact the phone has a headphone jack.

Benchmarks tell the same story we experienced in our time gaming on the phone, with it scoring a Geekbench multi-core score of 2,584.

Breaking down the specs inside the HTC Desire 12s, and there’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 chipset powering everything along, paired with 32GB of storage and 3GB of RAM, or 64GB of storage and 4GB of RAM. We reviewed the starting capacity version with 3GB of RAM, which is the one you’ll likely find in stores in the UK.

There’s microSD card expansion support, as well as 4G, Bluetooth 4.2 and a fast, accurate fingerprint scanner around the back of the HTC Desire 12s, and the phone also features NFC, which is often missing from more affordable smartphones.

Verdict

The HTC Desire 12s doesn’t make much sense to us, given the fact the HTC Desire 12 Plus is a similar phone with a more powerful chipset, albeit a worse selfie camera, that costs less. That confusion begins before we even talk about the non-HTC phones it’s competing with.

The Moto G7 Power, Honor 20 Lite and Realme 3 Pro are all similarly priced devices to the HTC 12s that completely wipe the floor with it from a specs and real-world use point of view.

In turn, in the Desire 12s, HTC has released a phone with poor battery life that is under-powered and delivers a sub-standard camera experience for the price, unless you think selfies are more important than photos taken on the main phone camera.

While its design and screen aren’t bad, therefore, unless you can get this phone at a fantastic price, with such great alternatives available today, it’s a no from us.

Who's this for?

Anyone who doesn’t use their phone much, doesn’t play games on the go and doesn’t need a decent camera experience should be sorted with the HTC Desire 12s. It can make and receive calls, and it looks good in the process.

Should you buy it?

Probably not. The other phones on the market that the HTC Desire 12s is competing with do significantly more and last longer in the process. It falls short of the mark in too many areas and in turn, fails to compete with the rest of the sub £200/$250 smartphone market.

Looking for alternatives? Consider these phones:

Moto G7 Power

The 5,000mAh battery in the Moto G7 Power ensures it lasts all day, and its chipset is powerful enough to handle 3D games. Meanwhile, if you’re picking it up in the UK, you’ll get 64GB of storage for around the same price as the 32GB HTC Desire 12s, making it an across the board better value smartphone.

Read our full Moto G7 Power review

Honor 10 Lite

With its Full HD screen and dual-camera setup, the Honor 10 Lite is a really good-looking phone that has a great camera for the price. Despite not having a powerful chipset, it still outperforms the HTC Desire 12s, and as with the G7 Power, packs in 64GB of storage.

Read our full Honor 10 Lite review

Realme 3 Pro

The Realme 3 Pro is an excellent phone across the board for the price. Its screen is Full HD, so is sharper and generally better than the Desire 12s, it packs a newer version of Android, and like the Honor 10 Lite, features a dual camera.

With over 4.000mAh of battery and very fast charging rounding things off, it’s a great alternative and a great smartphone in its own right.

Read our full Realme 3 Pro review

First reviewed: August 2019

Most people thought that HTC had silently departed the smartphone game, beyond its attempts to launch a blockchain phone in the HTC Exodus, but it seems most people were wrong, as the company has just launched two new smartphones.

The HTC U19e and HTC Desire U19+ are the company's two new devices, and they'll be launching in Taiwan in June and July, respectively – no news on a release anywhere else, but we've asked HTC if and when we could see these devices elsewhere. 

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We haven't seen a new HTC handset since the HTC U12 Life and U12 Plus in 2018, but even then it felt like the smartphone manufacturer had been winding down its production. So, we're intrigued to see the company is back with more – even though we're curious as to what happened to HTCs 13 through to 18.

What are the new phones?

The HTC U19e has an impressive-sounding 6-inch OLED display, with a 2160 x 1080 resolution, as well as a 3,930mAh battery, 24MP and 2MP dual camera rear array, and 6GB – although it has a middling Snapdragon 710 processor.

It's reportedly on sale for $475 (roughly £375, AU$680), so it's the high-end handset of the two.

The HTC Desire U19 Plus will have a 6.2-inch display, three-camera setup consisting of a 13MP main sensor, 8MP sensor with ultra-wide angle lens and 5MP depth sensor, and a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor as opposed to the U19e's in-screen sensor.

Retailing at $315 (around £250, AU$450), the HTC Desire U19 Plus is the more affordable phone of the two, and its specs show.

We've reached out to HTC to see whether these phones will release outside of Taiwan, and if there's anything else to know about them, so stay tuned to TechRadar to see if HTC can make a smartphone comeback.

• HTC isn't giving up on smartphones just yet

We've not heard much from HTC over the last year or so when it comes to new phone launches – but the company could be about to reveal a new device to the world, based on an official social media post.

HTC Taiwan posted a mysterious teaser on Facebook, with the date June 11 and not much else (that's this coming Tuesday, by the way). The teaser says HTC is "looking forward" to the date, and now we are too.

Based on what few rumors we've heard so far, HTC is planning to take a page out of Google's book and launch a mid-range handset at the same sort of price level as the Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL.

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A previously leaked spec sheet pointed to a Snapdragon 710, 6GB of RAM, and Android 9 Pie. A 6-inch, 18:9 screen with an FHD+ resolution (1,080 x 2,160 pixels) has also been mooted, plus a 3,930mAh capacity battery.

Schematics that have shown up online suggest the phone won't raise too many eyebrows in the design department, but will have a dual-lens front-facing camera.

The "e" mentioned in the teaser post is one reason that the phone is being tipped to be called the HTC U19e, though this is all speculation for now. The last flagship we saw from the company was the HTC U12 Plus last year.

There was also a cheaper HTC U12 Life for HTC fans to consider and this might be the direction that the tech firm's phones go in the future, leaving the flagship field free for the likes of Samsung and Apple.

HTC has also been making noises about releasing another blockchain phone this year, but the consensus seems to be that this launch is related to something else. We'll find out on Tuesday, and bring you the news as soon as it breaks.

• HTC still has a future in phones... but it needs to do something drastic

Via SlashGear

HTC isn't giving up on its blockchain phone strategy: following on from the Exodus 1 that launched late in 2018, the company has revealed a cheaper version of the phone is going on sale later this year.

We don't have many details about the handset yet, but HTC has said the phone will run as a full node – in other words, it will validate and relay Bitcoin transactions, and help keep the blockchain network running.

To do that it's going to have to hold the entire Bitcoin blockchain (200GB and growing) and take a performance hit too. The same full node functionality is coming to the Exodus 1 as well, apparently, but that phone will need an SD card.

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HTC's Phil Chen told CoinDesk that the aim was to make a blockchain phone that's "a lot cheaper" and "a lot more accessible", and that having the new phone run as a full node is going to be “a really important piece of the pie”.

Carry on crypto

The first HTC Exodus 1 was originally only available to buy via Bitcoin, but eventually went on sale for $699. The Exodus 1s going to retail for around $250-300 (roughly £190-230 or AU$355-430) HTC says.

We don't know any details about size, styling or specs at this stage, but no doubt HTC will fill in some of the gaps in the coming months, before the Exodus 1s goes on sale.

Back in February, Chen underlined HTC's commitment to these phones in an interview with TechRadar Pro: "We're not riding the wave, we are genuinely authentic in serving and developing for the community in creating the next generation of the internet in a decentralised way."

Chen also admitted that the first Exodus was "definitely a 1.0 version", so it's going to be interesting to see the improvements HTC makes with the Exodus 1s.

• After the death of crypto, is a second HTC Exodus blockchain phone viable?

Via Engadget

In 2018 HTC launched the HTC Exodus 1, a blockchain-powered phone that ran on the popular software technology. Now it looks like HTC is gearing up to release a second HTC Exodus handset – but we're not sure how popular blockchain-based systems are in 2019.

According to DigiTimes Phil Chen (HTC's 'auteur' phone-maker, not the bassist), has plans to release a HTC Exodus 1 successor, which we're tentatively labelling the HTC Exodus 2, by the end of the year.

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However there's been a big change in the blockchain scene over the past year, and HTC could have a hard time getting large numbers of consumers to invest in a blockchain phone.

The HTC Exodus 1 was a phone of its time...

The HTC Exodus 1 was one of the world's first blockchain-powered phones, jumping on the blockchain bandwagon. Although the cryptocurrency crash had started, blockchain still had a fairly respected reputation.

As one of the most well-known systems powered by blockchain, cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin, are often conflated with the software it runs on.

Fans of crypto and other blockchain-based systems embraced the HTC Exodus 1, which HTC says met sales expectations, despite its high price of around $1000 / £770 / AU$1420 (its actual price was in bitcoin or Ethereum, which fluctuates quite a bit).

But then 2018 ended, and crypto continued to crash – now, in the eyes of general consumers, all blockchain-based tech is tainted, and so HTC is going to have an uphill battle getting people interested in its new phone.

...but would an HTC Exodus miss the boat?

Fans of cryptocurrency or other blockchain-based systems are still going to find the HTC Exodus an intriguing device – but it seems the number of those fans is slowly declining the further the crypto crash progresses.

Of course a handset based on such a complicated, and rather niche, piece of tech won't appeal to many non-tech-savvy consumers, so it's not like the HTC Exodus 2 has such a huge built-in audience that it can afford to alienate buyers.

By the sounds of it, Chen doesn't plan to release the HTC Exodus 2 until late 2019, so it's entirely possible the crypto market will have recovered by then – but for now, we're not sure how much sense another blockchain-powered phone makes at this point.

• HTC isn't giving up on making smartphones just yet

With HTC reducing the number of smartphones it put out in 2018, and some of its engineering talent moving to Google, there have been whispers that HTC is about to get out of the smartphone game altogether. Not true, according to HTC.

In comments given to DigiTimes, an HTC spokesperson says that the firm is going to "continue strengthening" its smartphone business, with new models scheduled for launch at the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019. The most recent phone from the company was the blockchain-inspired HTC Exodus 1.

The phone has become "indispensable" to our daily lives, HTC told DigiTimes, and it plans to leverage its virtual reality expertise into developing more exciting mobile tech. 5G is another area HTC wants to invest in, apparently.

Life in HTC yet

You could argue that headsets like the HTC Vive Pro are making a bigger splash than HTC's handsets these days, but it would appear that we haven't seen the last of HTC-branded phones, even as the market gets ever more competitive.

One of the handsets that HTC has confirmed is on the way is as updated version of the HTC U12 Life, with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage on board. The company also says that "multiple models" of "consumer and enterprise devices" are in the pipeline, so we could see a lot more HTC devices in 2019 than we did in 2018.

We're glad HTC seems committed for the long haul – it means more choice for the consumer, and we've always been impressed with the fit and finish of HTC's handsets, even if they haven't always sold well. Stay tuned to see what else is in store.

• HTC still has a future in phones... but it needs to do something drastic

Via Android Authority

20/09 - UPDATE - We got the chance to sit down with Phil Chen to pick his brains on the Exodus 1, and found out some interesting details - click here to see it all, or read on for more....

Blockchain is everywhere at the moment, with the technology making headlines around the world with its potentially game-changing applications (as well as frequent valuing fluctuations)

HTC is now jumping on the bandwagon, with the Exodus 1 - what it says is the world's first major blockchain-powered smartphone.

The Taiwanese firm has not had the smoothest ride in the smartphone market in recent months, having made a raft of recent job cuts, device shipments dwindling across the world and its most recent U12 Plus flagship receiving somewhat mixed reviews.

The HTC Exodus 1 is the brainchild of Phil Chen, who was the driving force behind the Vive virtual reality headset, and forms the start of a major blockchain push as the company looks to return to winning ways.

HTC says it wants to "make decentralization a reality", expanding the blockchain ecosystem through a connected network of mobile devices - so could the HTC Exodus 1 be the start of a new generation? Here's everything we know so far...

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HTC Exodus 1 price and release date

• What is it? HTC's new blockchain-boosted smartphone
• When is it out? Now - but with certain conditions
• What will it cost?  0.15 BTC or 4.78 ETH - but in real-world money, probably around $1000 (around £600, AU$1300)

23/10 - HTC has today confirmed that the Exodus 1 smartphone is on sale now.

The company has placed the device firmly within the frame of cryptocurrency fans, announcing that the Exodus 1 will cost  0.15 BTC or 4.78 ETH. 

There's no indication on real-world price yet either, although HTC Exodus head Phil Chen did tell The Verge that the device would be "comparable" to the $1000 (around £600, AU$1300) Finney blockchain-powered phone released by Sirin Labs last year.

The device is on sale in  34 countries from today, including the US, UK, Hong Kong and Singapore, but won't launch in China, due to the country's stringent rules and regulations on technology.

So how will a blockchain phone work?

Blockchain technology may be flavor of the month, but it's not at first glance an ideal fit for smartphones - as high-stakes trading and cryptocurrency mining often requires hugely powerful hardware.

HTC is looking to start something completely new with the Exodus, claiming that the device is the launchpad for its new native blockchain network ecosystem, with the individual Exodus devices acting as nodes for trading amongst users.

For those all-important trades, the device will include a cold storage wallet that will support all major cryptocurrencies, including the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as decentralised apps.

The cold storage hardware is important as it means that the Exodus will be able to store the user's cryptocurrency offline, often on a separate web server or other hardware, adding an extra layer of security 

Blockchain technology should ensure extra security due to high-level encryption tools, as well as the ability to connect to superfast networks to ensure speedy transactions - Chen notes that the device will be "the most secure hardware wallet out there."

When we spoke to Chen recently, he revealed that the HTC Exodus has built a secure enclave (that it calls the "trust zone") directly within the device's Arm hardware. This includes with a new standard it calls trust execution environment, which keeps your cryptocurrency funds safe and sound. 

Lastly, it's also worth noting that Exodus is already the name of a well-known online cryptocurrency wallet service, offering an "all-in-one wallet to secure, manage and exchange blockchain assets" - which could well be the backbone of HTC's new approach.

Overall though, there are still a lot of questions to be answered, so now it's over to HTC to prove it has what it takes to make the Exodus a success.

What else do we know?

HTC has already said that the device will run Android O, meaning that all Google's usual familiar services will be present and correct - and this will include some of HTC's own security tools on top.

The HTC Exodus also comes with a unique security Social Key Recovery safeguard if you do misplace your phone, and with it, all your precious currency.  

This means that the wallet can only be recovered or accessed with a unique key, and during the set-up process of the device, you'll be asked to select several contacts, each of whom will then receive a part of the key, accessed only through a special app.

If you do misplace your device, getting access to the wallet can only be done by obtaining all the part of your key

As for hardware though, we're still none the wiser - and HTC is got giving anything away just yet. 

However it will need to be fairly powerful to cope with cryptocurrency mining, which will mean most probably an octa-core processor and a hefty amount of RAM, along with a sizeable battery to power all of this.

And despite HTC may claim, the Exodus is not the world's first blockchain phone. That title belongs to the little-know Finney phone, which was revealed earlier this year. 

Created by Sirin Labs, the $1,000 device allowed users to store and spend digital currencies without incurring transaction fees.

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The HTC U12 Life is a lower-cost alternative to the HTC U12 Plus. It does not look or feel much like that top-end phone, though.

It's slimmer, the camera arrangement is different, and the back feels like plastic rather than the glass it actually is. And all the specs are lower-end.

If you're just out for a phone without the scary price of a top-end model while not entirely stripped of features, you're in the right place. The HTC U12 Life costs £299 (around $390/AU$555, but with no current plans for a US or Australian launch). But competition elsewhere is strong.

The Honor 8X, Moto G6 Plus and Nokia 7.1 all have more higher-end touches than the HTC U12 Life. It is the camera that lets the HTC down in isolation though. It simply lacks some crucial smarts almost every other phone over £200/$250 has these days.

If you don't want a Motorola or a notch, though, this is a reasonable option.

Key features

• Large, notch-free screen
• Sensible mid-range specs
• Plastic rather than glass or aluminum shell

A substantial screen and flashy visual design at a reasonable price are the HTC U12 Life's top-line selling points. The screen is a substantial six inches across. There's no notch, but it is the now-default taller 18:9 shape.

Other important elements include a dual rear camera, with 16MP and 5MP sensors, and 64GB of storage. The HTC U12 Life also has a fingerprint scanner and a headphone jack.

Manage your expectations about the design before ordering though. While the HTC U12 Life's glass back finish has a hint of glamour and is more recognizable than most phones, it feels more like plastic.

Pick up an HTC U12 Life then a Motorola One 30 seconds later and you'll instantly feel the difference. The HTC's shell does not lend it a particularly high-end feel.

The phone has the Snapdragon 636 chipset, a relatively recent Qualcomm processor also seen in the Nokia 7.1. However, the HTC U12 Life does seem slower to launch apps than rivals, which is a knock to the day-to-day performance.

Design

• Striking rear
• No official water resistance
• Moderately large frame

2018 messed with how easy it is to judge phone size when ordering online. The old rule: 6-inch phones are huge, and only really for enthusiasts and the giant-handed.

That has changed. A phone with a big screen inch count will feel smaller than it used to if it has an 18:9 screen, and smaller still if it features a notch. Notched mobiles tend to have longer screens, for more inches for each millimeter of phone width. And width is what makes a phone feel large.

The HTC U12 Life is a standard 18:9 ratio phone. It feels fairly similar to an older 16:9, 5.5-inch phone. It's not so large you should start measuring your hands, but is bigger than the Motorola One or Nokia 7.1.

Its build is also different to every big-name alternative. At this price a glass or metal back is standard procedure and the U12 Life does offer a glass body - but it does feel more like plastic. A premium finish when held in the hand this is not.

As the build is not particularly competitive, you had better love its look. The HTC U12 Life’s rear has a two-zone style. Its top part is ultra-glossy, and looks a little like colored glass. You can get it in pink, which HTC calls Twilight Purple, or dark blue.

About two-thirds of the HTC U12 Life’s back is not glossy, though. Thin textured lines run across the rear.

As well as providing a distinctive look, there are a couple of practical benefits to these ridges. They make fingerprints less visible, and add an unusual feel. The aim is clearly to make the HTC U12 Life feel like something other than plain glass, and it's mostly successful.

The HTC U12 Life does have USB-C charging, a solid 64GB of storage and a rear fingerprint scanner, though. This scanner takes a beat longer than the fastest but is still reliable and fairly quick.

A 3.5mm headphone jack is one of the benefits of buying a phone at this price rather than one that's much more expensive. Not all manufacturers leave such sockets out of their top models, but HTC does.

You do miss out on water resistance, though. 2017’s HTC U11 Life had a great IP67 rating, allowing for full-on submersion in water. This time there's no official waterproofing at all.

It’s not expected at the price though, and the slightly cheaper Motorola One has a splash resistant nano layer but no serious water protection.

Screen

• Sharp screen
• 1080p-grade resolution
• Limited auto brightness intelligence

The HTC U12 Life has a 6-inch 18:9 screen. There's no notch so you don't get that $1000 phone look. However, there are plenty of notch haters out there who will be relieved to have an option that does not have one.

This leaves the phone with larger areas above, and in some cases below, the screen that are simply blank. A little under 80% of the front is display.

Of course, if you care mostly about gaming and video streaming, a notch isn't useful anyway. The HTC U12 Life's screen is large, with roughly the same display width as the OnePlus 6.

Sharpness is good too. Resolution is 1080 x 2160 pixels, and as this is an LCD rather than an OLED, there's almost zero sign of the underlying pixel structure. Small fonts only look less than pristine if you get your eye right up to the panel.

Color performance is decent too. The HTC U12 Life doesn't look under-saturated.

There's relatively little control, though. Most rivals offer natural and vivid profiles, but you don't get any choice here. There's just a color temperature slider, in Settings.

In use, only one negative part sticks out after a few days, though. The HTC U12 Life has a pretty basic Auto brightness setting. Most phones at this level have customizable auto brightness, letting you tweak the backlight level without reverting to manual control.

Touch the slider here and Auto Brightness switches off. It's kind of annoying, indicative of a lack of software intelligence.

Battery life

• All-day stamina, better than predecessor
• USB-C charging
• Fast charge with no wireless option

The HTC U12 Life has a 3,600mAh battery. It's not gigantic. It's not small. And the real-world performance is largely consistent with this spec.

It will hang on for a full day, usually with 15-20% charge left if you don't do anything too demanding such as long stints of gaming or hitting the YouTube 'next video' button a few too many times.

Purely anecdotally, the HTC U12 Life seems to last less long than the Honor 8X, but no shorter than the Moto G6 Plus.

Results in our standardized video test are acceptable, if nothing more. Left to play a 720p video at maximum brightness for 90 minutes, the HTC U12 Life loses 25% charge.

The Moto G6 Plus loses 20% in the video test, suggesting, as in other areas, that the U12 Life's optimization is, well, sub-optimal. We also noticed the phone becomes a little warm during video playback. Trotting out a 720p video is not a tough job.

But in both real-life testing and a more abstract video benchmark, the HTC U12 Life outlasts the HTC U11 Life. That phone lost 35% in the same test and often struggled to last a full day of normal moderately intensive use.

You charge the battery with a USB-C port, and there’s fast charging. However, there's no wireless QI support.

Camera

• Solid hardware
• Somewhat limited software and processing
• Clunky, slow HDR

The HTC U12 Life has a 16MP rear camera and a secondary 5MP one on the back to act as a depth sensor. This creates a 3D map of a scene in order to blur out the background.

Some phones at the price only have 2MP depth sensors. Sure enough, the phone seems a little better than the Motorola One at successfully picking out the subject and not blurring parts it shouldn’t. However, it's also pickier than most about the scenes it will successfully blur, and those it won’t.

While the hardware is decent, the software can in parts seem like a bit of a blunt instrument. You see this elsewhere too.

The HTC U12 Life does not have a modern HDR mode, for instance. Most phones at this level have an Auto HDR setting that decides when HDR optimization is needed, and how much dynamic range optimization to apply.

Here you have to manually enable and disable HDR. That's not good enough.

The HDR mode is powerful, but not at all subtle when only a little tweak is needed. It's also very slow, taking around 2-2.5 seconds to capture and process an image. Before this happens, you can't take another shot.

Switch HDR off and the HTC U12 Life's camera is quick, but you'll also end up with quite a bit of overexposure in mixed lighting scenes. HDR also reduces contrast too much, taking away some image punch. Where's the subtlety and finesse? Rival phones at the price have it.

Other kinds of processing are a little unrefined too. HTC's noise reduction is less effective, or at least aggressive, than most, leaving you with grainy low-light images.

However, with a steady hand you can get a decent amount of detail even when shooting at night, for a non-stabilized camera without very large sensor pixels anyway.

The HDR mode is also effective at boosting dynamic range and image brightness at night, although the lens is susceptible to flare even after cleaning the glass covering.

Learn when to use HDR and when to leave it and you'll get some great images out of the HTC U12 Life. It just lacks some of the intelligence expected at the price nowadays. And that HDR speed: bad.

Some important extras are missing from the video side too. There appears to be no software stabilization, so handheld video will always look quite jerky, even at 1080p, 30 frames per second.

You can shoot at up to 4K at 30fps or 1080p at 60 frames per second, but proper stabilization is a major omission.

A 13MP selfie camera sits around the front. And we see some of the same processing character as the rear camera. The detail rendering is fairly good even with slightly dingy indoors lighting, but noise is quite apparent too. Again, some of the finishing touches are missing.

This does improve if you turn the face enhancement mode on, though, as it applies extra processing. It does also seem to lighten skin, though, which has raised eyebrows in similar modes in the past.

Camera samples

Software

• Sense UI with Android 8.1
• BlinkFeed still a key feature
• Slightly slower than average app loads

The HTC U12 Life runs Android 8.1 and has HTC's custom Sense interface on top. BlinkFeed is still its main feature.

This is a customizable feed that sits alongside your home screens. Most manufacturers have moved away from this style of feed, and HTC doesn't do itself any favors with this BlinkFeed incarnation.

It's populated partially by ads and doesn't even have a proper newsfeed element any more. For years BlinkFeed was primarily powered by News Republic, which turned the feed into a kind of digital magazine. You could choose the included topical themes, and specific websites.

Nowadays you can add social networks, but the focus is more on location-based suggestions and promotions for HTC services. You can remove BlinkFeed, though, so it's no real reason to reject the HTC U12 Life.

Elsewhere, Sense is a perfectly solid interface. It's not as clean as Android One, used in the Nokia 7.1 and Motorola One, but there's a Themes tool that offers substantial customization.

This lets you change icons, wallpapers, sounds and widgets. However, many of them will degrade the look of the software so make sure you choose carefully.

The Themes app is one of HTC's main additions. When you first set up the phone, you're given the option to install all sorts of third-party extras, but HTC itself doesn't add too much.

There's a sound recorder, weather app, flashlight and phone manager, but nothing ambitious. Or too annoying.

The HTC U12 Life is not the fastest performer in its class, though. While there's no obvious lag when simply using the phone day-to-day, when compared side-by-side with the Motorola One, the HTC does seem to take slightly longer to open apps.

This gives the phone an ever-so-slightly languid feel. Note the 'slight': this is far from a performance disaster.

Movies and games

• A big screen is good for games and video
• Passable stereo-style speakers
• Solid, not class-leading, gaming performance

The HTC U12 Life is a good phone for video and games, for several reasons. First, its effective display area is bigger than the Nokia 7.1's and Motorola One's. Slightly punchier color would be welcome, but the combo of sharpness and a large display are the main takeaways.

This phone also has more than one audio driver. There's a speaker on the bottom, and the earpiece on the front puts out sound too.

You don't get a perfect stereo image as most of the sound comes from the HTC U12 Life's bottom edge. However, it is still far better than a single driver.

Sound quality is okay. Top volume is fine and clarity is decent, but there's virtually no bass.

Like almost all phones at the price, the HTC U12 Life can play most demanding 3D games very well. Only titles that feature armies of 3D objects and those with highly customizable graphics show its limits.

Asphalt 8 runs very well at either Medium or High graphics, for example, but Ark: Survival Evolved really starts to chug when you move above Medium visuals. PUBG also only lets you play at Low graphics, which is disappointing.

The same is true of some other phones at the price, apart from the Honor Play. This gamer-focused model has the same Kirin 970 chipset used in the Huawei P20 Pro, one of the best and (at launch) most expensive phones of 2018. It's the outlier for gaming at a mid-level price.

Performance and benchmarks

• Performance meets expectations for 2018 phones
• Recent chipset

A Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 powers the HTC U12 Life. This is an octa-core processor with 1.8GHz Kryo 260 cores and an Adreno 509 graphics chipset.

The Nokia 7.1 and BlackBerry Key2 LE use the same CPU.

In Geekbench 4 the HTC U12 Life scores 4,945 points. This is only around 10% higher than the Motorola One and its older Snapdragon 625 chipset. The U12 Life has the performance now expected at the price, if not much more.

There are other improvements in the newer 636, of course, like support for higher-res camera sensors, QuickCharge 4.0 and a new ISP, which processes the camera images. However, there's not a significant performance boost in the move from Cortex-A53 cores to Kryo 260 ones.

Verdict

Like the HTC U11 Life before it, the U12 Life is not a standard-setting smash. Its build is less high-end than the competition, and there's no currently-trendy notch.

Of course, a phone that doesn't have these elements is precisely what some people want. This is the HTC U12 Life's real value. It's something a little different.

It misses out on a higher score because of a lack of important optimizations and finishing touches.

The phone seems to load apps slightly slower than rivals with the same spec, and the lack of a good Auto HDR camera mode is a big loss for photographic versatility. But it's still a solid phone that saves you hundreds off a top-end model.

Who's this for?

If you think glass phones are slippery and shatter-prone, and most definitely don't want a notch, the HTC U12 Plus is a solid choice.

Should you buy it?

The Honor 8X offers a bit more for your money, as does the Moto G6 Plus, a similar notch-free phone. So you'll have to like the specific design here for the HTC U12 Life to be the best option out there.

Here are four alternatives to the HTC U12 Life:

Honor 8X

This phone arrived at roughly the same time as the HTC U12 Life. For around $50/£50 less you get a more powerful chipset, a larger screen with a notch and a higher-res camera with a surprisingly decent AI low light mode. Honor offers more, for less money. But not everyone likes Honor's 'Emotion' software.

Read our full Honor 8X review

Moto G6 Plus

This Moto costs a little less than the U12 Life. And is a reminder that while once the G series was all about very low-cost phones, today they’re actually surprisingly glossy.

A curved glass back, good 12MP rear camera and splash resistance all make this a compelling alternative to the U12 Life.

Read our full Moto G6 Plus review

Nokia 7 Plus

The Nokia 7 Plus is aging in the fast-paced world of phones. But its price has now come down to match the HTC U11 Life. It has the same size screen, and a comparable notch-free design, but you do get a little more with the Nokia.

That includes a faster Snapdragon 660 chipset, smart aluminum shell and a very handy secondary camera on the back that allows for 2x optical zoom, which is something not often seen at the price.

Read our full Nokia 7 Plus review

Honor 10

Yet more proof of Honor’s ultra-aggressive approach, the Honor 10 offers quite a bit more for just a little more money. There’s 128GB of storage, a faster chipset and higher-spec cameras. However, the screen is smaller, so this is not really a like-for-like comparison.

Read our full Honor 10 review

First reviewed: October 2018

The HTC Exodus could be one of the most interesting phones of 2018... but it’s also one that we don’t know a whole lot about just yet

That's all set to change though, as HTC has now confirmed that the Exodus will be announced on October 22.

The news came in an Instagram post on the official HTC Exodus account. The post included a short teaser video, highlighting the Exodus name and the October 22 date, but seemingly not giving anything else away.

It’s a launch that’s ever so slightly later than the third quarter claim the company previously made, but with a specific date given now – and one that’s so close – we wouldn’t expect it to slip again.

Secure storage

So what can you expect from the HTC Exodus? Well, it’s a blockchain- powered phone which will include a cold storage locker with support for all major cryptocurrencies, so you’ll be able to store your currency offline. For that reason it’s also a phone that puts a big focus on security.

Beyond that, and the fact that the HTC Exodus will run Android, we don’t know much else about it. The specs for example remain a mystery, but we should have answers soon.

If you like the sound of the Exodus it’s worth noting that it could be expensive, with the company previously claiming that it would be "comparable" to the $1,000 (around £600, AU$1,300) Finney phone, which is also powered by blockchain.

Also, while we know the HTC Exodus will be announced on October 22, there’s no word yet on when you’ll actually be able to buy it.

• What is blockchain? Everything you need to know

Via PocketNow

Now that Google has officially unveiled, pushed out, and named Android 9 Pie, the only remaining question is when your handset is going to get it – and for HTC owners, we now have a bit more clarity on which phones are in and which phones are out of the Pie party.

Via a tweet from the official HTC account, the company has confirmed that the HTC U12 Plus, the HTC U11 Plus, the HTC U11 and the HTC U11 Life are all in line for the software upgrade. That's basically all the top-end phones that HTC has released over the course of this year and last year.

What's less clear is when exactly the Pie upgrade will appear – HTC says timeframes are going to be announced "in due course", so you'll still have to hang tight for now. Let's hope HTC's engineers get the software ready sooner rather than later.

Pie in the sky

Of course it's a long-running headache for Google that new versions of Android take an age to make it to the majority of handsets. Android 9 Pie has been pushed out to Pixel phones and the Essential phone but everyone else is still waiting.

Samsung greeted the news of Pie's arrival by announcing that 12 of its devices are in line to get Android 8 Oreo – Pie's predecessor – sometime in the next six months or so. No rush, Samsung. It's no wonder that Google updates its mobile apps and some core features in Google Play Services independently of the major Android updates.

At least HTC phone owners now have some kind of confirmation about which handsets are due a Pie upgrade. In the meantime all eyes are on Google for the last big Android flagship launches of the year, expected around the start of October.

• You can expect fewer phones from HTC in 2018 and beyond

Via Android Police

Amazon Prime members have just been given yet another great extra for their subscription fee – exclusive access to the brand new HTC Desire 12.

For any Prime members that like the look of the new handset, they will be able to pre-order the Desire 12 ahead of the general release date of July 14. That means a decent mid-range smartphone for a relatively meagre £149.

Exclusive pre-orders are a new departure for Amazon, and could herald its greater participation in future phone launches. "Seeing Amazon dip their toe in the mobile phone pre-order deal waters is an unexpected move from the retail giant," said Adam Marshall, Editor of Subscriptions and Services at TechRadar, "We can't imagine every phone manufacturer would want to limit the reach of their handsets at pre-order phase, but making a handset appear more exclusive in this way could work for some brands and devices.

It also feels like a nice little promotional perk for Amazon ahead of Prime Day in just a couple of weeks' time."

Amazon Prime benefits

This exclusive offer is just one of the many extras that Amazon Prime members who pay the £79 annual subscription get. 

Prime Video offers movies and TV shows to be watched via the app on mobiles, tablets, smart TVs and more. Prime delivery is a huge part meaning free delivery as early as same day in some cases. There is also Prime Music, Prime Twitch, Audible, Kindle Lending Library, Prime Pantry, Kindle First Program, Amazon Student, unlimited photo storage and, of course, early access to Lightning and Prime Day Deals.

What is the HTC Desire 12?

The HTC Desire 12 comes with a 5.5-inch 720x1440 resolution display with the latest 18:9 ratio and a minimal bezel that make this looks like a more high-end handset. That Liquid Surface finish goes a long way to helping create that premium look. 

Under all that shiny exterior sits a quad-core MediaTek MT6739 CPU backed by up to 3GB of RAM and 32GB storage. On the rear is a 13-megapixel single lens camera while the front offers a 5-megapixel selfie snapper. All that is powered by a 2,730 mAh battery and runs the Android OS with HTC Sense skinned over the top.

• Discover all of today's best mobile phone deals in the UK

HTC's low-cost Desire series has been resurrected this year with the Desire 12 and Desire 12 Plus, and both phones continue the proud tradition of offering solid specs at a lower-than-average price point, all wrapped up in a gorgeous design that wouldn't look out of place in the coveted flagship sector of the market.

With an able Snapdragon 450 chipset, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and a roomy 6-inch display, the Desire 12 Plus has what it takes to impress on paper, especially at the £199 (around $265, AU$350) price point.

However, there are rival phones which offer even better specs for around the same price (or less) which means you're essentially paying for HTC's software and design skills more than anything else – both of which are admittedly above-average.

Design

• Lightweight and appealing design
• Acrylic bodywork is a fingerprint magnet
• No water or dust protection

Looking at the HTC Desire 12 Plus when it's lying flat on a table, you'd swear that it was constructed from glass, like a great many leading smartphones these days. 

However, the moment you scoop it up it's obvious this is a budget device with premium aspirations.

The glossy rear is in fact fashioned from acrylic, which makes the phone feel light (it weighs just 157.5 grams) and slightly low-rent; however, it's just as much a magnet for fingerprints as a glass-backed device.

As the 'Plus' in the name suggests, this is what you might unkindly refer to as a 'phablet' in terms of size. It measures 158.2 x 76.6 x 8.4mm, but thanks to its modest weight and svelte profile it never feels too big during use.

The rounded edges make it easy to grip, but that acrylic rear panel can get slippery, so some kind of case might be a good idea. While we're on the topic of ruggedness (or lack thereof), it's worth noting that there's no water or dust protection of any kind.

The rear of the Desire 12 Plus is home to the fast and accurate fingerprint scanner, located just where your finger rests during normal use. Below this is a very subtle HTC logo, and above – in the top-left corner – there's the dual camera setup, along with an LED flash. Next to this is a single noise-cancelling microphone.

Flip the handset over and you'll find the front is dominated by the 6-inch IPS LCD screen, which offers an in-fashion 18:9 aspect ratio. 

There are bezels at the top and bottom, but they're only marginally larger than those seen on the similarly-proportioned Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus.

The 2.5D glass allows for a slight curve around the edge of the display where it meets the main body of the phone, which further accentuates those pleasantly rounded corners. 

The only negative to the design is that you can feel where the front and back panels 'join' with the plastic chassis of the phone; in an age of unibody handsets, this is more jarring than it perhaps should be.

The top of the HTC Desire 12 Plus is totally blank, while the bottom edge fits in the 3.5mm headphone socket, mono speaker, in-call mic and micro USB port – the latter being something of a disappointment, as most major Android phone makers have moved on to USB Type-C now.

On the left edge there's the dual SIM tray (which can also be used to insert a microSD card to expand your available storage) and on the right you'll find the power button and volume rocker. The former is made of textured metal, while the latter is plastic.

Display

• 6-inch IPS LCD screen with an HD+ resolution of 720 x 1440
• 18:9 aspect ratio is perfect for movies

The Desire 12 Plus’s 6-inch IPS LCD screen gives plenty of real estate for watching movies, playing games and browsing the web. It boasts a resolution of 720 x 1440, which in turn delivers a pixel density of around 268 pixels per inch. 

Given that some budget phones around this price point have 1080p screens, it's a little underwhelming.

As the market becomes increasingly saturated with OLED-equipped phones, those with IPS panels have trouble standing out from the crowd. 

That's the case with the Desire 12 Plus, too; while it's refreshingly clear with solid viewing angles, it looks noticeably dull when compared to the latest OLED screens seen on other handsets and brightness is lacking.

Still, colors look natural enough and contrast is decent, and HTC has even included a color temperature option in the settings, so you configure the display to your own personal taste.

The 18:9 aspect ratio brings the Desire 12 Plus in line with 2018's Android flagships, and makes consuming media content on the phone a real pleasure – although it's worth noting that there are still quite a few Android apps which haven't been adapted to fit tall and long displays.

Battery life

• 2,965mAh battery last a day on a single charge
• No fast or wireless charge support

For a phone with such a large display a battery of 2,965mAh doesn't sound like much, but the low resolution of the screen and the improved battery optimization of the Snapdragon 450 chipset really help to extract as much usage out of a single charge as possible.

In our standard battery test – which involves playing a 90-minute 720p video with brightness turned up to maximum – the Desire 12 Plus lost 25% of its battery life. 

That's not great but nor is it bad going for a phone with a 6-inch screen, and in a typical day we found there was always a bit of juice left in the tank by the time we got to bedtime. 

The Desire 12 Plus' battery even lasted partway into the next day, but it doesn't quite have the staying power to make it through 48 hours so a nightly visit to the wall charger is recommended - especially if you're doing intensive tasks like 3D gaming or watching movies on a daily basis.

Sadly, there's no fast charging support so you may want to get into the habit of leaving the device plugged into a wall socket overnight.

In the time it takes phones with larger batteries and quick-charge support to fully replenish their power (about an hour and a half, give or take), you'll reach around 70% on the Desire 12 Plus. Needless to say, there's no wireless charging.

Camera

• Dual 13MP + 2MP cameras on the rear, with LED flash
• 8MP selfie cam
• 'Bokeh' effects are excellent

While Google seems content with using a single camera on its flagship Pixel 2 phones, dual-camera setups are very much the norm in 2018, and the Desire 12 Plus is no exception.

However, while it's common to see phones sporting two or even three cameras, the way in which each device makes use of them is very different. In the case of the Desire 12 Plus, that second 2MP snapper is utilized solely for depth information and does not act like a telephoto ‘zoom’ camera.

This sensor is instead used in the phone's 'Bokeh' mode, where it judges depth and allows the device to apply a realistic blur effect on the background. Multiple focal point capture is also possible, so you can adjust the areas of focus at a later date.

It's one of the most convincing uses of a dual-camera system we've seen in this sector of the market, but the whole process is hamstrung by the camera's sluggish shutter speed.

Even when you're shooting in near-perfect conditions the Desire 12 Plus can prove to be frustratingly slow when it comes to locking on and snapping a shot, which often means you're left with a blurry image. 

As is to be expected on a low-cost device, there's no optical image stabilization, so you have to keep your hands really still to get a decent image.

When shooting in dark environments, photos exhibit low levels of noise, but the Desire 12 Plus takes what feels like an eternity to focus and capture the shot. With so many handsets offering solutions to low light photography it's a real disappointment to see HTC's phone struggle in this area.

On the plus side, colors look realistic and there's a high level of detail without too much compression. Photos rarely come out overexposed, and everything has a pleasing sense of vibrancy.

The HDR mode makes your shots even more striking, but it slows down the already sluggish shutter speed even more, so it's best left for those times when you're supremely confident of getting the perfect snap.

For those of you who like to dig into the settings to capture the perfect photo, you may find the Desire 12 Plus's camera app to be a little too simplistic. While you can adjust things like ISO and white balance, there's no true 'manual' mode.

In terms of video, it's possible to shoot 1080p footage at 30fps but there's no 4K mode – something that even budget phones like those produced by Xiaomi manage to include. There are hardly any video features to speak of, so don't expect to find screen filters or fancy slo-mo effects, like those seen on the Samsung Galaxy S9.

Camera samples

Interface and software

• Runs Android Oreo
• HTC's Sense UI is bloat-free

Like a great many Android devices in 2018, the Desire 12 Plus is running Oreo out of the box, but it comes with HTC's own UI skin sitting on top. Mercifully, it's a very light skin with minimal changes and almost no bloatware to speak of; HTC has even sensibly opted to avoid duplicating features which already exist within Google's own app ecosystem.

The two areas where HTC tries to set itself apart are BlinkFeed – which sits to the left of your main home screen and works very much like Google's own ‘Now’ app by pulling together a news feed which showcases posts from your social media, the latest weather reports and much more besides – and Sense Companion.

Sense Companion is HTC's take on the AI assistant craze which is currently sweeping the world of smartphones, and like Siri, Bixby, Google Assistant and Alexa, it tries to make your everyday digital life that little bit easier.

It uses data like your location, the time and day and basic usage patterns to offer helpful suggestions with the objective of streamlining your daily grind.

It will, like Google's AI companion, pick up on nearby points of interest, but it offers other cool features like being able to tell you if your battery won't last until your next calendar appointment, or if going for a run is advisable given the current weather.

In a neat touch, a small Sense Companion icon 'bubble' appears on the left edge of the screen when it has a suggestion, which is delightfully non-obtrusive.

You can, of course, simply use Google Assistant instead, and to be honest it's probably a more mature and feature-rich option when compared to Sense Companion.

While HTC has some neat ideas and the way in which the software 'blends' with the UI is commendable, we can't help but wish handset makers would simply do a better job of integrating Google's superior option rather than spending all this time and effort making something that simply isn't as capable.

Performance-wise, moving around the UI is a smooth affair, and apps load quickly. Switching between active applications is a breeze too, but there are brief moments of lag when the phone is performing several different tasks in tandem.

Movies, music and gaming

• 18:9 widescreen display is great for movies and gaming
• Mono speaker is loud but too easy to muffle
• 32GB of storage, but only 22GB is available to the end user

That large 6-inch screen is ideal for watching movies, although the low resolution does mean that things can look somewhat ill-defined at times. The lack of brightness also means that you'll want to restrict your cinematic pursuits to darkened environments. Despite these minor shortcomings, the 18:9 aspect ratio screen performs admirably.

The audio side of things isn't quite as impressive, however. While the mono speaker is loud and doesn't exhibit any distortion at high volumes, its position on the bottom edge of the phone means it's far too easy to accidentally cover with your hand during use.

We'd also have preferred a stereo speaker setup, like that seen on the much pricier HTC U12 Plus. Thankfully the phone comes with a 3.5mm headphone socket, so you can use a pair of wired headphones when you're binging on Netflix.

With just 32GB of storage – of which around 22GB is available to the end user once essential downloads are taken into account – the Desire 12 Plus isn't blessed with loads of space for music, movies and games.

It's a bonus then that the second SIM card slot can be used to insert a microSD card of up to 2TB in capacity. If you intend to download a lot of media to your phone – and you don't intend to use two SIMs – then you'll almost certainly want to pick up a large card.

3D gaming is an excellent way of testing the performance of any smartphone, and the Desire 12 Plus handles these well enough. The phone's relatively low resolution screen helps take pressure off the CPU and GPU, but really intense titles still stutter slightly when the action hots up. More basic 2D games run smoothly, however.

Specs and benchmark performance

• Snapdragon 450 with 3GB of RAM
• Acceptable performance with occasional pauses
• No NFC support, or 5GHz Wi-Fi

The Desire range has always been about offering good performance at a mid-range cost, and this new model is no different. Beating at its heart is the Snapdragon 450 chipset, which isn't Qualcomm's cutting-edge silicon but is more than capable of handling the stresses of modern smartphone use.

It has been designed with a focus on dual-camera effects and battery management optimization, and is paired with 3GB of RAM.

In benchmark tests, the Desire 12 Plus is in roughly the same ballpark as phones like the Nokia 6 (2018), Honor 7X and Honor 9 Lite. In Geekbench, the Desire 12 Plus scores 3,758 in the multi-core benchmark, which is a similar score to those posted by other 2018 budget challengers.

There are some pretty significant omissions in the spec sheet for the Desire 12 Plus, though. There's no NFC support, which means you can't use the phone to make mobile payments with Google Pay. The lack of 5GHz Wi-Fi band support is also slightly disappointing.

Verdict

In keeping with its ancestors, the HTC Desire 12 Plus offers good performance on a budget, but there's nothing truly awe-inspiring here. The screen is 720p, the chipset is workmanlike rather than blazing fast and the camera setup can often be frustrating to use due to its slow shutter speed.

However, when you're paying less than £200 (around $265 / AU$350) for a smartphone in 2018, you have to expect these shortcomings. On the plus side, the phone looks attractive even if it doesn't use premium materials, battery life is decent and the ability to add more storage via microSD cards is welcome.

HTC's approach to Android is also a breath of fresh air, as it hasn't pre-installed loads of annoying bloatware and it wisely chooses to avoid duplicating services that Google already offers.

Who's this for?

HTC's standing in the mobile industry may have flagged in recent years but the company still has a reputation for quality, and if you've been happy with HTC handsets in the past then there's little reason why you'd feel let down by the Desire 12 Plus.

It offers a big-screen experience on a budget and – when it works – can capture some really striking 'Bokeh' effect images with its dual-camera setup. Combine this with a stylish design and a bloat-free UI, and you've got the perfect phone for youngsters or those who simply want a device for smartphone basics.

Those sticking to a tight budget will also find it a solid purchase, but it's worth being aware that there are more powerful and capable Android phones on the market for roughly the same price.

Should you buy it?

If you're only really bothered about having a phone which has acceptable stamina, a big screen and doesn't look cheap and nasty, then you'll be as pleased as punch with the Desire 12 Plus.

However, if you're keen to get as much value for money as possible and value things like a nippy camera and a Full HD display, then you'd be better off looking elsewhere, or perhaps putting a little more money towards getting a more capable phone.

The HTC Desire 12 Plus is a good phone for the money, but the following handsets are decent alternatives.

Honor 9 Lite

This cheap and cheerful handset is perfect for casual mobile users, and boasts a decent camera and an eye-catching design. Its biggest shortcoming is the rather overbearing custom UI.

• Read our full Honor 9 Lite review

Nokia 6 (2017)

This budget blower has stock Android, strong photography skills, a great design and better speakers than the HTC Desire 12 Plus, but suffers when it comes to battery life.

• Read our full Nokia 6 (2017) review

Moto G5 Plus

The Moto G range is seen by many as the king of the budget Android sector, and you can see why with the Moto G5 Plus, as it has a premium build and good specs that make it hard to resist, but the camera is slightly underwhelming.

• Read our full Moto G5 Plus review

First reviewed: July 2018

Who might buy the HTC U12 Plus? Either those who are upgrading from the decent HTC 10, or someone looking for a decent alternative to the iPhone / Samsung duopoly at the top of the smartphone tree.

That person would want something cool and alternative, a phone that promises to let them do something their friends couldn't do, and do so at a reasonable price. The thing is, while the HTC does offer that, it's not a good thing.

It's definitely cheaper: you can buy this phone for £699 / $799 / AU$1,199 off contract and SIM free, which is far less than the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus and iPhone X it's going up against.

There's a lot of power here as well: the basic model of the U12 Plus comes with 6GB of RAM combined with the latest cutting-edge Snapdragon 845 CPU, as well as (at least) 64GB of onboard storage.

On top of that HTC's created a 'cold-polished' glass production process, meaning curved edges with thinner bezels on the screen, and two tone colors on the back... all in all, a very attractive phone indeed.

We've not even mentioned the excellent audio quality, both from the speaker and through the bundled high-end USonic headphones - there's a lot here that HTC fans would be cooing over, and other people that just like a quality smartphone too.

The camera is finally dual-sensor on both the rear AND front of the phone, and it's been awarded a stunning DxOMark, the testing program that rates the quality of the pictures. 

However, despite all that, it's more about how the phone is put together, and while HTC has created a smartphone with excellent elements and some truly unique with the squeezable sides, there's still just something missing…

HTC U12 Plus price and release date

The HTC U12 Plus isn’t horrendously expensive, the £699 / $799 / $1,199 starting price a little lower than a few other flagships on the market, including the iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy S9, which should help to make it a fairly attractive proposition.

In terms of a release date, the HTC U12 Plus was launched on May 23 onto the world, but it won't be until June that you'll be able to get your hands on it. Europe will be set for the middle of the month, according to HTC, with the US likely to follow suit soon after.

Verizon will be stocking the HTC U12 Plus in the US, with various other networks likely to do the same in the UK. It'll also be available for sale on HTC.com and through Amazon.

Design

• Strong, rounded design
• Lovely two-tone effect
• Transparent Blue and Flame Red both striking

The design of the HTC U12 Plus is rather different to the HTC One M8 (or even the HTC 10) might have experienced. Where they would be used to a phone that's hewn out of aluminum, something that feels incredibly premium in the hand, the new phone is made out of mostly glass.

While that sounds fragile (and we did cause a small crack at the top of the phone from dropping it onto a hard floor) it's actually a pretty premium material to use in handset construction and allows for more signal to get into the device. 

You also get a clear plastic case in the box, which provides more than ample protection for the handset.

When you're talking about a phone that can manage to download 1.2Gbps at its peak, it's important to use a material that lets that through.

What it doesn't explain is why the HTC U12 Plus is shorn of any wireless charging - surely that would be an obvious thing to pop into the handset this year? Sadly, it's not there, even though nearly every other brand has added it into its flagship devices.

The U12 Plus, despite there not being a smaller model to go alongside, is a large unit and falls squarely into 'phablet' category. It's certainly a plus in terms of size, although it's only 8.7mm thin.

As such, you'll struggle to get your whole hand across it, thanks to the screen encompassing most of the front of the phone. That's something a lot of people will be used to now, but if you're moving from the HTC 10 or the Samsung Galaxy S6, for instance, it'll take a bit of getting used to.

The main flaw in the design - and we very much mean it when we say flaw - is the immobile buttons on the side. There are no buttons anywhere on this phone, and it's designed to make it almost impervious to water and dust.

The idea is solid: fewer moving parts means fewer things that can go wrong. But the first time you try the non-moving volume buttons, which react to pressure from your digits despite not moving. It feels like you’re doing something wrong.

It's so difficult to change the volume on this phone. You have to keep shoving your finger into the 'button' and hoping it works, with no physical feedback to work out if you've succeeded until it buzzes.

You can't even change the sensitivity of this element... it's really weird when the buttons previously were just fine the way they were. We constantly keep turning the phone on by stroking the sensitive power key when picking up the handset, and it's really irritating.

We even had a situation where if you put it in a slightly tight jeans pocket, it would turn down the volume down on what you’re listening to randomly.

If you pick up an alternative phone, actually being able to press a button in on the side feels like coming home to normality. You might eventually get used to the sensation, but it’s a stupid move from HTC that’s instantly going to put people off when they try it.

Screen

• Hi-res, longer display without a notch
• Color reproduction good, but not the best around

The screen on the HTC U12 Plus is the best we’ve seen on a phone from the brand, taking into account all the features that its competitors are thrusting into their wares these days.

It’s a 6-inch, 18:9 1440x2880 resolution affair, but lacks the notch at the top that many top phone of the moment are packing. Instead there’s a large-ish bar at the top and bottom, which would be sacrilege for some brands looking to create the ‘all-screen’ look that adorn many phones.

However, it’s hard to say this is a negative thing given those bars pack in the improved Boomsound speakers that offer exceptional audio from the phone, and while it does make the phone rather long and slightly weightier, it’s a trade-off worth trying.

The quality of the screen, which uses the Super LCD display technology that largely only HTC puts in its phones, is fine without being amazing. It’s a long way from the best on the market - that title is always nabbed by Samsung OLED technology (or perhaps Sony’s decent LCD offerings) because of the rich color reproduction and contrast ratios.

HTC’s done a fairly decent job here - HDR 10 quality is supported for YouTube, but not Netflix or Amazon Prime just yet (which seems like a slightly dumb move when there’s loads of great content for mobile on there). Still, at least it’s packing plenty of brightness and YouTube HDR looks decent.

Generally watching movies on this phone is fine too. Coupled with the Boomsound speakers it’s a great phone to hold, and the sharpness and colors, along with the brighter screen, are fine… another time when it’s hard to use a better word, despite that one being so bland.

Looking at the screen off-angle shows it gets a little darker than the competition, and doesn’t wow in the same way.

The color reproduction on the screen can be altered a little, making things a little more colorful if you want more of a cinematic experience. However, both this and the default version look a little artificial - again, it’s just fine.

There’s nothing terribly wrong with the screen quality on the HTC U12 Plus, but without full HDR support, great off-angle brightness or impressive color reproduction, it’s hard to really laud the efforts here on a high-end smartphone.

• Edge Sense should be lauded as innovative, but doesn't always work
• Double Tap is also a neat idea, but almost unusable without lots of practice

Edge Sense 2, the ability to squeeze and tap the sides of the HTC U12 Plus, is the big highlight of the phone, and we want to say one thing: like the decision to remove the buttons and replace them with vibrating protrusions, HTC’s efforts to create innovative smartphones must be lauded.

We’ve had too many boring, identikit devices on the market these days, and combined with the powerful speakers, it’s great to see HTC doing something different.

The only issue is that what it’s doing isn’t really that impressive. We’ve struggled for a year to really get our heads around the idea of squeezable sides, and while they do have a function, it’s not a natural interaction.

The issue is the placement of the squeezable area - it just doesn’t fall naturally in a place where you can exert a lot of pressure. We dropped the effort level needed right down to the lowest point, and there were still times when we couldn’t activate it first time. Then there were times when it would activate too easily, or do so in a pocket.

That’s what’s needed to make this innovative idea work - making it infallible as an action so you can truly say ‘my new phone does something cool’ to your friends. That’s not what happens here.

For instance, squeezing the phone to open the camera is fine, but when inside the app you can short squeeze to take a picture, or long squeeze to turn it to selfie mode.

That’s fine and works pretty well (if you can get your head around squeezing the phone naturally). However, squeezing the phone to take a picture is not a natural action, and your wrist is at an odd angle so squeezing is even harder. This means that the phone will tilt slightly when taking a picture, which can ruin the framing.

The cool thing with the HTC U12 Plus and the squeezable sides is that you can customize then long and short squeezes to do pretty much anything in any app - it’s only a few teaching taps to do something like playing and pausing in Spotify, for instance. You do have to be in the app to make it work - it won’t start and stop music in another app, obviously - but being able to contextualise the squeeze in any app environment is cool.

Again though, it’s hard to remember to do this as it’s not a natural movement. We tried to get used to it in a fortnight’s use, but nothing really came naturally. Perhaps over months it would become a normal thing, and we have noted others saying they like the feature, but we couldn’t get used to it.

The HTC U12 Plus also comes with another power baked into its sides: double tapping either edge will open a contextual menu, such as shortcuts to apps or a smaller, one-handed mode.

It’s a smart idea, but again doesn’t work in practice. The reason is simple: it’s too low down to work flawlessly. When you make an effort to go for the ‘tapping zone’ it only takes two or three attempts to open it, and after you’ve got the rhythm down it’ll work more easily, but it’s an effort.

That’s the thing about all the new features on the HTC: the volume keys, the double-tap zone, the squeezable sides. Force yourself to learn them over a long time and you might find they become second nature, and they’ll be handy and you’ll be expert. 

They’re certainly not intuitive though, so the average user who isn’t willing to learn them is not going to enjoy the main features of this phone.

Amazing audio

• The bundled noise-cancelling headphones are a real treat
• The dual external speakers are loud without distorting terribly

Something anyone can enjoy is the brilliant audio that the HTC U12 Plus kicks out. Let’s get the only negative out of the way first: there’s no headphone jack as HTC eschewed it last year.

However, the brand has more than made up for it in our opinion thanks the bundled USonic headphones in the box. These in-ear buds offer superb sound as well as noise cancellation, and to come for free is amazing.

If there was a 3.5mm headphone adaptor in the box it would be perfect, but between Bluetooth options and the excellent offering from HTC we never really felt the need for anything else.

The sound quality from the HTC U12 Plus, even with poorer headphones is, rich and clear, but the USonic wired buds are a step up. Not only do they sound rich with loads of useful bass, the U12 Plus will also run a diagnostic by pulsing sound into your ears to create an audio map that improves the quality of the audio.

This really does boost things up - although it’s hard to tell how tailored it truly is - and again improves quality. No matter what you’re listening to, it’s a joy on the HTC U12 Plus, not only because of the quality but that it supports all the higher quality formats, like Hi-Res Audio and the latest aptX streaming options.

The audio wins don’t just stop there though: the Boomsound speakers on the outside are louder and more vibrant than ever. The volume hasn’t just increased though - the sound quality has been moved upwards too, to allow whatever you’re playing to be free from distortion.

It’s still not quite in the league of a dedicated Bluetooth speaker - nor would you expect it to be - but it’s much clearer than anything else. We often use waterproof phones in the bathroom to listen to podcasts, for instance, but when the shower is on the voices can’t be heard.

That’s not the case with the HTC U12 Plus - the voices carry over the sound of rushing water, making this phone the option we’d choose for listening to music or podcasts when doing chores or cooking.

Actually, this is the phone we’d choose if we wanted a brilliant audio experience for anything - it’s really great.

• Camera has some excellent capabilities in many scenarios
• Can't quite cut it with the best, despite a great DxOMark score
• Low light is where it really excels

The camera on the HTC U12 Plus comes with high praise from DxOMark, using similar HDR boosting techniques to those found on the Pixel 2 range, which has arguably the best camera on the market.

There’s the dual 12MP sensor on the rear, offering both electronic and optical image stabilisation. There’s a ‘standard’ sensor on there, and a telephoto lens in a set up that’s very similar to the iPhone X.

In practice though, the U12 Plus doesn’t always give results that put it in the same bracket as the Pixel 2. Where it does excel is in low light shooting, as it’ll thrash the iPhone or Pixel 2 at creating more natural colors and capturing extra elements in the gloom.

The image processing generally does a good job of clearing up noise in the darker scenes, leading to clearer snaps even though the exposure has been boosted to show more of the image.

In daylight too, the images are pretty good - certainly clear and crisp. The sharpness is good, but the colors often err on the side of too saturated - this is especially true when in slightly darker scenes, where there’s a touch of gloom around.

While there’s a modicum of automatic scene recognition, we never got a snap that made us step back and marvel at the wonder of it, which has happened on other phones (like the Galaxy S8 or the Pixel 2, for instance).

Bokeh mode is a little patchy. Outdoors, in great light with a good slug of distance from the subject, you can get some great results, as seen here:

However, take it indoors and in darker scenes the U12 Plus can struggle a little - hard to say why when you'd expect some aperture compensation, but the processing certainly cleans things up after the shot.

It seems that the U12 Plus can also recognise food too, punching up the colors of the snap a bit when needed. It can make things seem a little over-saturated, but apparently that's the best way to take a food photo.

There’s nothing wrong with the images, but like so much of this phone they’re a mix of impressive snaps and some that fail to inspire much awe. The low light will impress you, and it’s clear HTC has worked on this, but overall you’ll sometimes be left feeling a little flat with what you’ve captured, although you’ll rarely get a bad snap.

That said, the camera software on the HTC U12 Plus is where it really falls down. It’s just so slow.

Opening the camera can sometimes take a second or two, and pressing the shutter button doesn’t fire instantly when the HDR mode is on (which you’ll really want). This might not sound like a lot described here, but in practice it’s really terrible.

Like other Android phones, there are a lot of buttons on show here, and it’ll take a while to figure out where they all are. The bokeh mode is tough to work out too, with a tap leading to a pause as the camera app adds in the capability. Tapping it again adds in manual mode (so you can adjust the blur) and once more turns it off.

It’s not terrible, but it doesn’t feel terribly intuitive. There are loads of camera modes to choose from, from hyperlapse to slow motion to pro mode, with the latter coming with loads of different parameters to play with.

In this mode you can also shoot in RAW, which will please those who like to manipulate your snaps with all the information retained. There’s no RAW processing on the phone any more, which is a shame as it boosted the photos quite well, but image enhancements through Google Photos (the default gallery app here) do a pretty good job of improving things.

The selfie camera has also been upgraded on the HTC U12 Plus, with two 8MP sensors on the front offering both a wider image and the ability to take selfies with a blurred background.

The former works pretty well, making it easier to get more people into the shot, and the latter performs just fine as well - not as blurred as we’d like, but it gets the job done.

Where it does fall down is image quality a little - skin tone in particular doesn’t look very natural, and the damn Beauty Mode is set on by default, making your skin look overly smoothed and cartoony. Yes, you can turn it off, but it adds a small ethereal glow to things.

Some people might really like this, but beauty mode feels like something that should be an effort to turn on, because the results often don’t look great.

Perhaps you’ve come away from reading this section thinking that the camera on the HTC U12 Plus is poor. It’s not, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just a little rough around the edges and doesn’t delight in the way some of its peers do - and the camera software is too slow for our tastes.

In terms of capability and customization though, as well as low-light performance, the HTC U12 Plus excels and we doubt you’ll ever get a truly bad picture from it.

Sonic Zoom, the video recording feature that allows you to zoom into the action and focus on only the audio of the subject, works pretty well indeed, and you can get some really nice video using this with 4K shooting at 60 frames per second.

There's a smoother zoom as well - so when you zoom in it won't jump straight away, so you can get a more impressive cinematic event from your phone. We'd argue that the HTC range has been one of the best devices for video recording for years, and the U12 Plus has done nothing to diminish that reputation.

• Once again, battery is average
• Keeping a power pack around is handy
• No wireless charging

Oh HTC. Why do you have such a chequered past with battery life, and why has it not been fixed with the U12 Plus?

It feels like we’re writing the same thing over, and over, and over again with this brand. Like iPhones, the battery life on this handset is just a touch too poor to be relied upon every day. 

Let’s start with what we think you’ll experience out of the box. After a few days’ use, you’ll find the battery life is a little ‘slippy’, dropping away in standby too easily, despite being a fairly large 3,500 mAh power pack. 

Some apps are more to blame than others, like WhatsApp for instance, but overall the phone is a bit too power-hungry.

It’ll heat up a little too often and if you’re multi-tasking hard with it then you’ll find that you’re rarely going to last a day before the battery gives up the ghost, and more often than not you’ll be getting a touch low around 6PM.

Even on Airplane Mode, with Bluetooth music streaming from Spotify, you’ll only get around 23 hours’ use… which is crazy given the WiFi and mobile data aren’t firing.

One thing we do like in the battery screen: information on how much the Bluetooth and WiFi are sucking down power, which will hopefully quell the legions of people that keep turning them off in fear of losing battery.

We ran our usual battery test, looping a Full HD video at full brightness for 90 minutes, and the HTC U12 + lost 23% of the battery, with 77% left (obviously). This isn’t a great performance, with many other flagships on the market hitting late 80s often, and shows how slippy the battery is.

With no wireless charging on board, despite the glass back, it’s harder to top up the phone easily. Sure, we’re not average users as we’ve got wireless charging pads at home and at work (due to testing so many flagships with the capability) but it’s become a really useful feature.

Get to work, pop the phone on a little stand and you’ll go home with full power. Walk into the living room or bedroom and put the phone down on a pad and it’s charging all night. Yes, you can plug in, but the simplicity of wireless charging really is attractive.

You can use the Quick Charge capability to boost in charge easily - we tested this and found we had 40% power from almost dead in half an hour, and 68% after just over an hour’s charging, which is pretty good. Stick the U12 Plus on charge for 15 minutes and you’ll have around 20% juice, which should just get you home.

What gives us a touch more hope that the battery life isn’t going to stay poor is Boost+, the excellent management app from HTC. This program constantly monitors the phone for apps acting out, unnecessary actions needing to be shut down and working out which apps need full power and which don’t.

After a week or two of using the phone, the U12 Plus will intelligently suggest apps that don’t need to run in the background as much, or need all the pixels firing to deliver the same experience.

When these suggestions come in, the app shows you how much battery you could be saving - and if you accept these, each day it’ll tell you how much battery has been saved. We’re getting an hour or so’s battery life back each day, and that’s pretty huge when things are marginal. 

We’re not sure that it’s going to do any more than that, but keeping the phone clean and running smoothly in the background is not only useful, but it should preserve the performance of the battery a little over its lifetime.

• Very powerful handsets
• Still a few small bugs in the system
• Blinkfeed is a shadow of its former self
• Freestyle themes are still a nice touch

K, so we’ve gone through all the key features of the phone, but what’s it actually like to use day to day?

The first thing to note are the new security features, and we have to say we’re pretty impressed with what’s on offer. Both face unlock and fingerprint scanning are on offer to help you get into your phone, and both work really rather well.

The face scanning didn’t sound that impressive when we first saw the phone, using fewer points of recognition and not using infra red to see you in the dark. However, with the screen firing brightly for a second in the dark to help the phone see your face, it’s pretty flawless.

There are still a few misses, and more than we found with Apple’s FaceID, but it was pretty easy to default to the easily found round fingerprint scanner on the rear of the phone.

Once you’re into the phone, the interface is very similar to that found on HTC phones from years gone by. HTC Sense remains one of the cooler Android overlays, with things like Freestyle themes a unique proposition.

They’re hard to find, but when activated Freestyle themes allow you to turn apps into stickers and place them all over a landscape or picture, which is much more interesting than a boring grid of apps to look at.

The theme also extends throughout the phone, with colors and fonts changing to match as well - like we said, they’re hard to find within the phone and digging around the HTC Store is a bit of a chore, but there are some good options in there.

You’re able to whip through the HTC U12 Plus at a fair rate, with the high-end Snapdragon 845 chipset one of the fastest on the market, and 6GB of RAM more than adequate to keep things chugging away no matter what you’re throwing at it.

That’s on top of the aforementioned Boost+ app in the mix, which is designed to constantly remove junk that could be clogging things up inside. 

Our Geekbench 4 tests yielded expected results - the HTC U12 Plus is one of the fastest phones on the market, but not quite the fastest. A score of 8608 is behind phones like the iPhone X, Samsung Galaxy and OnePlus 6 - and the latter is particularly telling, as it’s a much cheaper phone.

There are a few bugs in the system though - some third party apps struggle, and the U12 Plus will sometimes pause before heading back to the home screen, before rebuilding the apps layout quickly in front of your eyes.

Bluetooth streaming can sometimes cut in and out, and the AirPlay support (which is a phenomenal feature to have in a non-Apple phone) doesn’t work, crashing out despite HTC telling us it was supposed to be functional.

One of the poorer HTC throwbacks on this handset is the TouchPal keyboard, which is really starting to lag behind in terms of usability. The word prediction still has random capitalizations in there, often suggests the same wrong word and can be a bit erratic when you’re mashing your fingers into the screen.

It’s not to say that the user couldn’t stand to try and be a bit more accurate, but other phone keyboards (and even SwiftKey, which has lost its way as a standout keyboard of late) can work out what you’re trying to say more accurately.

HTC Sense companion is an interesting feature of the phone - it’s supposed to be a basic AI module inside the U12 Plus, working out little things that would help you. 

Things like noting you’ve got an event that starts early in the morning and asking if you’d like an umbrella, or pointing out when power is draining fast and telling you to charge or get a power bank to make an evening appointment.

It’s also supposed to track your steps each day, along with the associated mileage and tell you how you’re doing each day… but that’s utterly terrible. 

It’s completely inaccurate, with days where we’d run six or seven miles coming up as three and a half miles with a third of the steps tracked.

The signal strength could stand to be a little better, where despite being made of glass specifically to allow more data to flow in easier we found that we were struggling for a signal in more places. 

This could be unfair on HTC, as it was on the train that we noticed far more connectivity black spots. It might be that other phones are just reporting a basic signal where there is none, but we definitely noticed more instances without connection.

The final thing to talk about in the interface is Blinkfeed, to the left of the main homescreen. It used to be a really nifty little place for entertainment, taking in your social networks, YouTube, calendars and news updates and presenting them in easy to read tiles.

However, the news element of this (powered by News Republic) seems rather broken. You can no longer add your topics of interest, instead being shown random nonsense from poor sources, and there are ads littering the space (ironically advertising the HTC U11).

It was a great idea when announced on the HTC One M7, and it’s sad to see it fall - it was a really diverting place when you had a few idle seconds, but now it’s just a mess and it’s a shame that you can’t replace it with something better.

You’ll see one common theme with the HTC U12 Plus review: it’s a fine phone, but not amazing.

We feel a little wistful with this phone as well: we’ve cried out for a phone brand to be innovative for a long time, doing something other than the same black rectangle with a camera on the back, that criticizing a brand that finally does feels wrong.

HTC might have been innovative, but in the wrong way. The volume and power buttons being immobile (but pressure-sensitive) and so similar to each other under the finger is a mistake from the brand and will put off new users. 

The squeezable sides are a nice idea, but we couldn’t find a way to use them effectively, as the hand position just doesn’t lend itself to activating the system properly.

There are some real wins on the U12 Plus though: the audio performance, both through the bundled USonic headphones and the external Boomsound speakers, is excellent.

The design of the phone, with the two-tone colors catching the light in an attractive way or the translucent blue showing the inside of the phone, is sublime - yes, it’s a little larger in the hand, but the build quality is at the level we expect from HTC.

The rest of the handset is like we said above: fine, but not amazing. The camera can do some nifty things, especially in low light, but is otherwise on a par with the rest of the industry (with an annoyingly slow interface). 

The screen quality and movie watching is… pretty good. Not the best, but fine. Battery life is just about OK (but could improve over time as the phone learns you). The price is better than some of the flagship phones on the market, but not as competitive as the similar-spec OnePlus 6.

Who's it for?

This is a phone for two types of people: those that crave a phone with excellent audio performance, and HTC fans. If you enjoyed the HTC 10, then you’ll find this handset a natural (if larger) evolution.

Otherwise, it’s hard to recommend this handset, because it doesn’t really excel in any place, and will irk when you try to change the volume, or encounter little bugs in the system (which, in fairness, may get ironed out and we’ll update the review if that happens).

Should I buy it?

If you’re one of the two types of phone buyer listed above, then yes: without doubt, this is the phone for you. You certainly won’t hate what you’re getting (although you'll need to get to used to some bits), and the performance will be just fine.

However, compare the U12 Plus to a Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus, iPhone X or OnePlus 6 and you’ll be a little disappointed with it being a fraction behind in a number of areas. It’s just, well… fine.

Thinking you might like to see some other options? These are the phones we think you should be checking out:

HTC U11 Plus

The difference between the U12 Plus and the U11 Plus isn’t huge, and the price is more competitive. You’re losing the fancier camera, inner speed and double tap bar on the side of the phone, but otherwise the experience is rather similar - a good option for the HTC fan on a budget.

•  Read our full HTC U11 Plus review 

OnePlus 6

The OnePlus 6 is easily the best phone from the brand and boasts a superior screen and slightly slicker performance. It’s also a darn sight cheaper, although you’ll lose a touch of camera quality and audio experience.

•  Read our full OnePlus 6 review 

iPhone 8 Plus

We can’t see many people choosing between Apple and HTC, but if you are up for an iPhone, this one is probably the closest. It’s a little more expensive but has the same larger screen, decent audio performance and a good dual-lens camera on the back, with good background defocusing.

•  Read our full iPhone 8 Plus review 

Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus

This is the best phone on the market right now - it’s got top performance, a great camera, strong battery life, an amazing screen and, well, it just excels in so many areas. A touch more expensive, but it’s not far off in terms of audio quality either.

•  Read our full Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus review 

LG G7 ThinQ

Odd name aside, the LG G7 ThinQ is another ‘alternative’ phone if you’re not looking for something from Samsung or Apple. It’s also offering decent audio, although not to the level of the BoomSound shown here, and uses AI smarts to take a decent pic. 

The two phones are largely on a par, so it really comes down to what you like in your hand - in the UK the LG is cheaper than the HTC, but it’s the other way around in the US.

• Read our full LG G7 ThinQ review

Update: The HTC Desire 12 Plus is now available in the UK for £199 (around $265 / AU$350) in Cool Black and Warm Silver. Original story and full details below.

HTC has unveiled the Desire 12 and 12 Plus, two phones that bring the new, longer 18:9 screen format at a lower cost.

The Desire 12 has a 5.5-inch screen with less bezel around the side, and offers a single 13MP sensor on the rear of the phone, with an f/2.2 aperture sensor. 

It's got 2GB of RAM with 16GB of onboard storage, or 3GB if you go for the 32GB capacity, and both variants are capable of handling up to 2TB micro SD cards.

Inside is a MediaTek quad-core CPU, which hints at a lower cost for the phone, as does the fact the HTC Desire 12 screen is only a 5.5-inch HD panel.

That means a resolution of 720 x 1440, and it's a long way from the QHD of the top-end Samsung Galaxy S9, for instance.

The HTC Desire 12 Plus pumps things up a little, and will clearly be the more expensive of the two, although has the same lower resolution, and still doesn't cost much at £199 (around $265 / AU$350).

The main change is to the camera on the rear of the phone, with the 13MP sensor joined by a 2MP option, designed to give some background blur bokeh effects.

It's a hint to the past here, where HTC was one of the first brands out there to bring dual sensors to the market, with the HTC One M8 offering the same depth perception.

The retro twist doesn't stop there on these phones, as both will have a similar acrylic glass rear to the HTC U11, although stop short of using the same Liquid Glass technique that made those phones look so stunning.

The HTC Desire 12+ is also running a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 CPU under the hood, with slightly more grunt being fed into the handset. Whether that's the reason the Desire 12 Plus is running Android Oreo and the smaller Desire 12 an unknown version of Android remains to be seen, though.

We don't yet know what the HTC Desire 12 will cost, but in the UK at least the HTC Desire 12 Plus is now available for £199 (around $265 / AU$350) in Cool Black and Warm Silver shades.

That's a lower price than we expected and the standard HTC Desire 12 will presumably be cheaper still.

When you'll be able to get your hands on that phone (or on the 12 Plus if you're outside the UK) is still anyone's guess, with pricing and regional availability still to be confirmed, but we'd expect a wider roll out for the Desire 12 Plus and a launch for the HTC Desire 12 to start soon.

• The best HTC phone at the moment is the HTC U11 Plus

“There is no ‘master U12’, the [HTC U12 Plus] is the flagship, and the next one that’s above that phone will be the 2019 product.”

That’s how Fabian Nappenbach, director of product marketing for HTC, explained the reasoning for calling this year’s phone the U12 Plus, despite there confusingly being no ‘original’ HTC U12. 

Last year we had the HTC U11 and then the larger U11 Plus later on, but apparently where that’s something other brands do regularly, it gave HTC something of a headache:

“The U11 Plus was something like the ‘director’s cut’ for the U11. When you do that, some of our fans now would think ‘OK, there’s this new [phone], I could wait until November because there many be something that’s even greater’ and this year we don’t want to do that.

“The HTC U12 Plus is our flagship phone for this year - this is where we go ‘all in’ on all of the technology and everything we want to be in there and we want to make sure that this name transports that attitude of the device,” added Nappenbach.

Knowing its place

That makes sense. Sort of - without the HTC U12, it’s hard to see what the ‘Plus’ is bigger than. 

In reality, it shows HTC has an awareness of what’s happened in the phones industry, having to show its top phone is better than a device that never existed - where Apple and Samsung can call their phones whatever they like, the rest of the industry has to scramble to project as strong a message as possible to the consumer.

“We want to be fair to ourselves, as when we look left and right how everybody’s using the term ‘Plus’ or ‘Pro’, we want everyone to know we’re in the league of the other ‘plusses’, in terms of [the tech] we’re putting in, making sure it’s a fair comparison,” said Nappenbach.

It’s no secret that HTC has been struggling in recent years - its recent positive financials bucked a trend of years of losses, and were largely to do with selling a big portion of its smartphone business to Google, so it makes sense that HTC would want to step further away from the low-margin world of low-end phones and concentrate on powerful flagship models.

• HTC still has a future in phones - but it needs to do something drastic

“We’re not pumping out as many high-end phones as we did, as the difference between [releasing] two generations in the same year is getting smaller and smaller - so we want to concentrate all our resources on a couple of phones,” said Nappenbach.

Where have all the engineers gone?

What’s interesting is that while Google is now in charge of a large portion of HTC’s smartphone engineers (and presumably its smartphone production too) to create the new Pixel 3, there still seems to be a lot of cross collaboration between the brands, calling into question whether there’s really a divide between Google and HTC after the sale.

“We’ve [sold] some of our resources to the likes of Google, they’re sitting in the same office building in Taiwan and we know each other and might even help each other,” says Nappenbach.

If this is true, then it’s a great thing for HTC: it’s hard to imagine a brand able to make a decent smartphone shorn of so many top engineers, and Google must have taken a significant portion of the company’s smarts. 

Having access to them would be crucial in terms of maintaining a high level of expertise in what it takes to make a competitive smartphone, as HTC doesn’t have the luxury of being able to put out a poor device every so often and still maintain relevance in the cut-throat world of smartphone manufacture.

What's in a name?

This mystery around the no-appearance of the U12 has highlighted another key thing: HTC has never really nailed the branding of its flagship smartphones.

Think of the sub-brands people know instantly: Ralph Lauren Polo, Toyota Prius, McDonald’s Big Mac… take off the company name and people still know what the product is related to.

Where Apple has the iPhone and Samsung has the Galaxy, HTC has never settled on a name for its smartphone flagship line: the Desire range in 2010 put HTC on the map, but then a few years later was switched to Sensation, then the ‘One’ branding during its more recent heyday.

Even that popular One line was confused: the One X came before the One, then we had the One M8, M9 and eventually just the HTC 10, as the brand presumably realised that two unrelated numbers in the title was a bit tough to work out.

Compare that to the ‘iPhone 4’ or ‘Galaxy S6’, it’s easy to see how consumers might be confused over which HTC phone is the latest model - and last year the ‘U’ branding was added into the HTC U11, meaning the obvious next step was the U12... but that's not happened.

Then again, is it fair to expect HTC to stick with the same branding on its phones when it's trying to stand out? 

Samsung and Apple are companies with an incredible marketing budget and can force a repeated message of any branding into consumers’ lives, where HTC hasn’t had the same clout to control the public’s perception of its products.

Take, for instance, the HTC Desire: arguably the first Android phone to be a real iPhone rival, it was a huge success for HTC. 

However, subsequent models weren’t as critically acclaimed (for instance, the battery life on the successor, the Desire HD, was dire) so rebooting the range with a new, exciting brand gave a chance to jumpstart interest, and did lead to a small uptick in interest.

In fact, do we even need a chronological update every year anyway? Samsung has the A and J series of phones, and the names of these stay the same each year, simply denoting which is the more powerful model (the A5 being better than the A3, for instance) and yet are still popular among consumers.

More importantly than having the right number on its products, HTC needs to create handsets we can look forward to, phones that stand for something consumers want and then hang a brand off that. 

HTC's current range of phones already look great, sound amazing, have attempted innovation - all things that could be used to create a groundswell of interest with the right name.

Ironically, HTC has had a massive hand in making the Google Pixel range - phones that are exciting mainly for the camera, the name tying in with that and giving a strong identifier.

If HTC were to make the HTC Sonic range, or the HTC Emblem or even the HTC Force, these would be things that signal what the phone is great at, something that says ‘buy this phone if you’re an audiophile / design fan / love to squeeze a phone’... something that resonates in an understandable way for the public.

The HTC U12 Plus is a good phone. In some areas, it might even be great, but the feeling right now is that it’s nothing exceptional, and even the most ardent of HTC fans might struggle to work out whether it’s the new flagship without a bit of Googling first - and that’s something HTC needs to solve fast.

• Our HTC U12 Plus review is nearly here - will it dubbed one of the best smartphones?

The HTC U12 Plus is a big, beautiful phone with an all-glass design that’s an absolute joy to look at. But if you’re buying one, you should probably also consider investing in an affordable case. 

No smartphone enthusiast wants a case, truthfully. But don’t worry, the shimmering glass will still be there, in perfect condition, for you to look at every now and then – that’s how you want to keep it.

Below is a small, but growing list of the best HTC U12 Plus cases to consider for your phone. While some of these options are untested, they are each a cut above the rest due to their value and design.

Editor's note: There are a startling number of cases available that are molded based on inaccurate rumors. Keep in mind that, while shopping, if the case image shown isn't representative of the HTC U12 Plus' final design, you might be getting ripped off.

Moonmini Polyurethane case

Want your HTC U12 Plus to look like a bizarro Google Pixel 2? Moonmini’s polyurethane faux-leather case does just that with its dual-tone design, leaving the bottom looking like the glass section on Google’s latest flagship.

This case snaps around the edges, protecting the gorgeous glass design of the U12 Plus, but leaving plenty of breathing room for its various ports, Edge Sense gestures and the haptic buttons.

If you want basic protection at a low price, this looks to be a solid option that looks pretty snazzy, too.

Spigen Liquid Crystal case

If you are feeling strongly about letting the U12 Plus’ glass design sing, the Liquid Crystal case from Spigen is for you. It clasps around the phone’s edges, but it does so without covering up the design that you paid good money for.

The U12 Plus is already impervious to dust and water, but this case will protect against scratches and preventable cracks from minor drops or collisions with a wall while the phone is in your pocket.

Spigen Rugged Armor case

Looking for function over form? Most people aren’t, but if you want to protect your U12 Plus above all else, the Rugged Armor case from Spigen is worth considering.

Covering the U12 Plus from all angles, this case goes above the others by adding a lip to the front, so that the glass covering the screen never touches a table. 

Spigen says this case boasts shock protection and buttons are easy to access. Edge Sense gestures will work with this case, but you may need to increase the sensitivity for them to work in this case (and all cases, really).

The HTC U12 Plus might sound like a big improvement on the HTC U11 – after all, it’s got both a new number in the name and the addition of a ‘Plus’.

But just how different is it really? Certainly, at first glance there are a number of similarities, but there are a lot of changes too, both visual and not.

That’s why we’ve created this guide to how the two phones compare, covering their design, display, power, camera, battery and more, so you can decide for yourself whether the U12 Plus’s name is justified.

• Read our hands on: HTC U12 Plus review

HTC U12 Plus vs HTC U11 design

The HTC U12 Plus has more visually in common with the HTC U11 Plus than the standard HTC U11, but that’s perhaps no surprise.

The U12 Plus has a glass back in Flame Red, Translucent Blue or Ceramic Black, along with a metal frame and slim bezels above and below the display, but no notch.

That general description could also apply to the HTC U11, except that phone comes in Amazing Silver, Sapphire Blue, Brilliant Black, Ice White or Solar Red and has larger bezels above and below the screen. That’s due in part to the fingerprint scanner being on the front, while for the HTC U12 Plus it’s on the back.

The exact dimensions of the HTC U12 Plus come in at 156.6 x 73. 9 x 8.7-9.7mm, so it's barely any bigger than the 153.9 x 75.9 x 7.9mm HTC U11, despite having a much bigger screen (which we’ll cover below). The smaller bezels presumably helped there.

Both phones have water resistance, but to different degrees. The HTC U11 is IP67 certified, meaning it can be submerged up to 1 meter deep in water for up to 30 minutes, while the HTC U12 Plus beats it with IP68 certification, meaning it can be dunked up to 1.5 meters deep for up to 30 minutes.

Also, while not super obvious at a glance, both phones have dual BoomSound speakers. These are split between the top and bottom of the phones with one speaker focused on treble and the other on bass.

We’ll let you know how well the HTC U12 Plus’s perform when we’ve fully put them to the test, but we quite liked the HTC U11’s in our review, though noted that it was easy to accidentally cover them.

HTC U12 Plus vs HTC U11 display

With the HTC U12 Plus you get a 6-inch 1440 x 2880 Super LCD6 display, while the HTC U11 has a 5.5-inch 1440 x 2560 Super LCD5 screen. So the screen on the HTC U12 Plus is larger and slightly higher resolution, yet as noted above it’s not much bigger in the hand, thanks to smaller bezels.

You’ll have to wait for our full review to see whether the quality of the HTC U12 Plus’s screen is better, but while the HTC U11’s generally impressed in our review, we’d expect at least slight improvements from the HTC U12 Plus.

Hopefully if nothing else it’s a bit brighter, as we found both the HTC U11 and HTC U11 Plus to be slightly dimmer than we’d like.

HTC U12 Plus vs HTC U11 OS and power

The HTC U12 Plus has an octa-core Snapdragon 845 chipset and 6GB of RAM, which is a truly top-end spec combo. The HTC U11 meanwhile has an octa-core Snapdragon 835 chipset and either 4GB or 6GB of RAM, which was a top-end spec back in 2017 but is now slightly more dated.

Only slightly though, as the HTC U11 should still be a very solid performer, but on paper at any rate the HTC U12 Plus has it beat. We’ll let you know just how speedy the new phone really is once we’ve had more time with it.

The two phones both come with a choice of 64GB or 128GB of storage and a microSD card slot, so there’s no difference there.

They also both run Android 8.0, however you can expect the HTC U12 Plus to be supported with updates for longer.

And they both have Edge Sense, which lets you squeeze the sides of the phone to activate certain features, such as launching Google Assistant, or taking a photo when you’re in the camera app.

However, Edge Sense has been tweaked a bit for the HTC U12, as for example a new double-tap option makes it easier to use with one hand.

HTC U12 Plus vs HTC U11 camera and battery

The camera on the HTC U12 Plus is a big change from the one on the HTC U11, as while the HTC U11 has just a single-lens rear camera, the HTC U12 Plus has a dual-lens one.

Specifically, it has both a 12MP UltraPixel 4 wide-angle lens with an f/1.75 aperture and a 16MP lens with an f/2.6 aperture, capable of 2x optical zoom. The U12 Plus can also record 4K video at 60fps and 1080p slow motion video at 240fps.

The HTC U11 on the other hand has a single-lens 12MP f/1.7 UltraPixel 3 camera. So that’s a bit like one of the lenses on the U12 Plus, but its video recording skills top out at 4K at 30fps. Both phones have optical image stabilization though.

But as well as an extra lens on the back, the HTC U12 Plus also has an extra lens on the front, with an f/2.0 aperture. This camera pair lets you create a bokeh effect and adjust the level of background blur both in real time and after taking a photo. The HTC U11 meanwhile has just a single-lens camera again, specifically a 16MP f/2.0 one.

As for the battery, that’s been seemingly given a boost on the HTC U12 Plus, as the new phone has a 3,500mAh one, while the HTC U11 has a much smaller 3,000mAh one. However, neither phone supports wireless charging.

We’ll let you know how long the U12 Plus’s battery lasts when we’ve reviewed it, but the U11 for its part lasts around a day of moderate use. The extra size of the battery in the HTC U12 Plus will hopefully help it last longer, but don’t forget that it has a bigger screen to power.

HTC U12 Plus vs HTC U11 price and availability

The HTC U12 Plus is available to pre-order from today, with prices starting at $799 for a 64GB model and rising to $849 for a 128GB version in the US. In the UK prices start at £699, and there aren't any details on Australian prices or availability yet.

The HTC U11 for comparison launched at $649 / £649 / AU$999, so it was a bit cheaper than the U12 Plus, especially in the US, and of course it's since dropped in price, so it's a lot cheaper now, especially in the UK, where it can be picked up from around £500.

Takeaway

Based on the specs, the ‘Plus’ in the HTC U12’s name seems justified. It has a bigger screen, a bigger battery, a faster chipset and twice the cameras of the HTC U11, while smaller improvements include better waterproofing and a seemingly refined design.

There are very few areas that don’t seem to have been changed – and hopefully bettered – in some way on the HTC U12 Plus, so it’s off to a promising start.

How well all these changes will come together and whether they’re enough for it to stand out amongst other 2018 flagships, such as the Samsung Galaxy S9 and Huawei P20 Pro, are questions we’ll answer in our full review, but you can see that HTC has put the work in to make this at least stand out from the U11 and U11 Plus.

• The OnePlus 6 is a slightly more affordable alternative to the U12 Plus

The HTC U12 launch date has been confirmed as May 23 by the Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer on its global and UK Twitter accounts.

An image showing the components of a device with the date of 23.05.18 over them was posted along with the message "Coming Soon. A phone that is more than the sum of its specs."

HTC is set to be the last major smartphone manufacturer to launch a flagship device in the first half of the year, with the LG G7 ThinQ announced yesterday and both the Honor 10 and OnePlus 6 due to arrive in less than two weeks time.

The teasing message that HTC has used to accompany the image does raise the question of just what specs the firm will see fit to include in the handset.

It may suggest that the HTC U12 will not pack the same amount of under-the-hood grunt, or eye-catching camera specs as rivals, but it could also refer to the AI capabilities of the phone - a hot topic for many of the new phone releases so far this year.

Dual cameras front and back and expandable storage seemingly confirmed

Taking a closer look at the image, and the components on show suggest the HTC U12 will have four cameras in total, with two on the front and two on the rear.

On the left of the image, above the large battery block, the SIM tray also appears to have space for a microSD slot - pointing towards an expandable storage option on the U12.

These match up with the various leaks and rumors we've seen around the HTC U12 (which may actually be called the HTC U12 Plus), which makes use feel a little more confident in our detective work.

• Everything we know so far about the HTC U12

Other than the manufacturer itself, a mobile network is one of the more official sources for information on a handset, and Verizon has just provided information on the unannounced HTC U12.

The network has listed the phone on its Open Development website, stating that the HTC U12 has a 3,500mAh battery and a frame-less Super LCD 6 display with a WQHD resolution.

That’s the same screen tech and likely the same sort of resolution as the HTC U11 Plus, though the battery sits between the U11 Plus and the standard HTC U11 in size.

The listing also notes that the screen unsurprisingly uses Gorilla Glass for protection, and that the phone is IP68 rated, meaning it’s dust-proof and water-resistant to a depth of 1.5 meters for up to 30 minutes.

The HTC U12 apparently runs Android 8, as you’d expect, along with HTC Sense Companion, and supports fast charging and Bluetooth 5.0.

Questionable details

It also lists Cat. 12 LTE support, which, as Phone Arena notes, is an older standard which doesn’t allow for as high data speeds as we’d expect, so this detail might be wrong.

There’s also an image in the listing, which is almost certainly wrong, as it’s heavy on bezel and looks like it might be the HTC U11, so this is probably a placeholder image.

It does put some doubt on the rest of the information but coming from a carrier we’d think most of this is likely to be accurate, and the fact that the HTC U12 is listed at all suggests it’s probably launching soon, which adds up with recent rumors that we’ll see the phone in May.

• Here's a more complete but less official specs list

The HTC U12 could arrive in early May, yet we still seen many leaked images of it to date, but we now have a good idea of how it might look as a new leak gives us one of our clearest looks yet at the phone.

Topa-3C (a Taiwanese screen protector company) posted the shots, which show a dual-lens camera on the back with a dual-LED flash below it and a fingerprint scanner below that. 

The only other real detail on the shiny black back is HTC's logo, about halfway down. The rear looks to be slightly curved and is probably made of glass, just like the HTC U11.

Details of the front are harder to make out, as without the screen on it's basically just a black rectangle, but one key detail you can clearly see is a dual-lens front-facing camera, which has been rumored before.

Few major changes

There doesn't appear to be a notch or any buttons on the front, and you can see that the top bezel is quite small. It also looks as though the HTC U12 (or HTC U12 Plus as it might be called) as pictured here has an edge-to-edge display.

It's a design that, other than the extra cameras, looks similar to the HTC U11 Plus, so don’t expect any big visual changes for HTC’s upcoming flagship.

Of course, these images could well be inaccurate, but the few image leaks we've seen previously paint a similar picture.

• The HTC U12 Plus looks to have top-end specs

Via Phone Arena

If you're an HTC fan – good news. HTC has brought you a phone that, in many ways, is as good as you could hope for.

Update: The arrival of the HTC U11 Plus and U11 Life, as well a new flagships from Google, Apple and Samsung, have put the U11 into perspective. The HTC U12 isn't too far off either, so if you're considering the U11 you may want to hold on for a month or two.

It's got an impressive spec list, unique design, innovation in the form of squeezable sides and a great camera, and since launch it's got that little bit better, thanks to the addition of Amazon Alexa.

The chipset buzzes along nicely inside a phone that's neither too big nor overly compact, and the interface is as slick as anything HTC has ever made.

In fact, if you're a fan of HTC above all other phone manufacturers, you can probably skip this whole review and just buy the thing (although we suggest you read the bit about the 'squeezable' Edge Sense element, as that takes a bit of getting used to) and just wait feverishly at the front door, waiting for your HTC U11 to arrive.

However, for everyone else, things are a bit more complicated. Yes, HTC has pretty much nailed the spec list, but it's doing so for a rather high price – and one which pits it against some strong alternative options.

Even HTC has diluted the U11's reach since its launch, with the arrival of the superior HTC U11 Plus towards the end of 2017 which packed in a bigger screen, larger battery and a design which reduced the size of the bezels around the display.

It's bigger and more expensive, but you can't help but think that perhaps it's the phone HTC should have launched as the U11 in the first place.

HTC U11 price and availability

• HTC U11 current price: from £499
• HTC U11 launch price: £649, $649, AU$999 SIM free

The HTC U11 originally launched with a lofty price tag of $649 (£649, AU$999), although today it doesn't seem all that expensive when compared to the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S9 and iPhone X.

As the U11 is almost a year old, its price has dropped and you can now pick it up for a far more palatable £499 in the UK, although similar discounts appear to have evaded the US.

On contract you'll be looking at paying less thanr £30 a month in the UK, $29 per month (with no upfront payment) in the US and around AU$59 per month in Australia.

The HTC U11 is still widely available from major networks and retailers, so if you fancy dipping 

• See the best HTC U11 deals

Design

• Two-tone shimmer impresses
• Well-built chassis
• Back sucks in fingerprints hugely

The design of the HTC U11 is something that takes a little getting used to – but it's worth taking the time to do so. Holding it in the hand for the first time is a little underwhelming, as the polished Gorilla Glass is so light that it feels a little plasticky in the hand.

The bulbous nature isn't as exciting or feel as premium as the metal build on last year's HTC 10, but don't let that bother you. After a few days you'll get used to the way it feels – and the HTC U11's chassis is well built and solid.

Aesthetically, the U11 appeals in a way we've not seen with many phones. The Liquid Surface design manages to offer two colors at once, with the 'Amazing Silver' and ‘Brilliant Black’ models we tested looking more blue/purple and black/green respectively, depending on the way you hold them.

There's also Solar Red, Ice White and  Sapphire Blue - and the red is easily our favorite, as you can see below.

The shimmer is really impressive... but only if you never touch this phone, as the U11 is one of the most fingerprint-friendly phones we've ever held. Ever. Ever.

The only saving grace is the fact that your prints wipe off easily, but the overall effect is diminished somewhat. There is a clear plastic cover in the box, which doesn't ruin the look of the phone while keeping it cleaner, but even that’s prone to the odd smudge.

It's also annoying to put any phone, designed to be held in the palm, in a case... and it's a particular issue with a phone you're going to have to squeeze to use.

In terms of the rest of the design, the U11 doesn't reinvent anything, with HTC instead putting together a phone with all the right bits in the correct places.

The fingerprint scanner on the front, in the (non-clickable) home key, is easy to hit and works almost flawlessly. Perhaps we're willing to give it more credit after Samsung played 'hide the scanner' on the back of its Galaxy S8, but this feels just right.

The rounded glass on the HTC U11 is probably one of the most striking things about the handset day to day, and it's something HTC put a lot of effort into for good reason. 

Yes, this is still the same ‘black rectangle’ design that so many other devices offer, but it’s got a foundation of quality and striking colors.

The volume rocker and power buttons on the right-hand side fit nicely under a thumb or forefinger, depending on your dominant hand, and otherwise things are very clean around the edge of the U11.

That's partly because the phone is waterproof to IP67 rating meaning you can throw it into water, but in real life you can just dunk it in shallow water, bring it in the shower or wash it clean without having to spend an extraordinarily large amount of money and shame getting it fixed.

One of the issues we have with this phone is there's no headphone jack on this phone, as HTC decided to follow Apple and Motorola's lead and drop the port in favor of a single slot. 

The USB-C port on the bottom of the phone will serve as the power and sound portal for most, which means it'll irk if you need to get some juice in while listening to your top tunes.

Overall, we're big fans of the way that HTC has redefined its design strategy. There are only so many ways you can make a phone look iconic these days, and HTC has built well on its design heritage in the smartphone space to deliver something you'd be proud to put down on the table.

Screen

• High resolution
• Slightly dim
• Auto brightness not perfect

The screen on the HTC U11 is something that’s tricky to review. Until recently the 5.5-inch display would have easily ticked all the boxes, as it does very little wrong.

It's large, bright and clear, with the QHD (1440 x 2560) resolution offering as much clarity as anyone could want while still, seemingly, preserving enough battery life.

However, with the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the LG G6 now on the market, there's something archaic about how the screen on the HTC U11 looks. The bezels appear massive, the screen boxy and it just feels... old.

However, if you're not bothered about those other phones, then you won't want for any better features on the HTC U11's screen – but don't put it side by side with the Samsung Galaxy S8 if you don’t want to be nagged by doubts about your phone choice.

While the screen is clear and bright in most situations, it can be reflective, and it's not as bright as we've seen on other handsets. There were times when trying to watch Netflix outside proved a challenge in terms of of angling the handset the right way, and only in the shade did it really start to show off the power of what the HTC U11 can do.

It's also not the brightest screen on the market, which shows that the new wave of shoving HDR compatibility into handsets is perhaps something HTC should have looked into.

The auto-brightness is still something HTC needs to work on, as it doesn't dynamically alter well enough at all – blinding in the night and not bright enough when heading outside. It should be able to work across all areas of the brightness spectrum, but we found ourselves heading into the notification bar to to tweak the levels too many times for our liking.

You won't miss too much from the screen on the HTC U11 – it's one of the better options on the market thanks to using the ever-evolving Super LCD technology – but it's not as impressive as other flagships on the market.

• Innovative idea
• Grip can make the camera framing move
• Both Edge Sense and Alexa feel too half-baked

The headline feature of the HTC U11 is Edge Sense, which essentially enables you to squeeze the phone and have it... do stuff. The reason we're being so vague is you'll get a different action depending on how hard and long you squish the phone for.

Out of the box, a quick squeeze on the bottom half of the phone will open the camera, and it’ll be in ‘basic’ mode.

When you've opened the camera, you can use Edge Sense to take a picture, or long-hold the sides to move into selfie mode (hopefully you're following this...).

This feels like it should be fairly intuitive, but we found we had to remember to do it time and again. And when you're taking a picture by pressing the sides of the phone, it'll cause the handset to tilt slightly, so you can miss the framing of the shot you're going for.

The idea of just squeezing the phone is smart in one way: you don’t need to move your fingers to hit the screen. But you can just double-tap the power button of the U11 to launch the camera and then press the volume down key to take a picture – and that’s actually more comfortable.

Head into Settings and you can customize what an HTC U11 Edge Sense squeeze does, and add a secondary gesture for squeezing and holding. Most of these are pretty innocuous. You can launch an app of your choice, start voice recording, toggle Wi-Fi or use the flashlight.

The most up-to-date choice for those who like to experience the latest tech features and fads is to launch a voice assistant. You can choose the standard Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. And the HTC U11 is one of the first Android phones to integrate Amazon’s assistant.

You download an app called HTC Alexa, which lets you talk to it just by saying “Alexa”, even if the phone is asleep. It can’t get past your security but is fairly good at recognizing different voices, and is a way to bypass Edge Sense.

At times it takes a few attempts for the HTC U11 to realize you’re talking to it, though, as if it was off playing solitaire or something.

Alexa’s current strength, other than the usual feats of being able to tell you how many people live in Belgrade or the age or Michael Caine, is connection to smart home services. However, we’ve struggled to get our Philips Hue lights working with HTC Alexa.

Abilities outside of Alexa’s basics are added through things called Skills, which are effectively assistant mini-apps. Even after a couple of hours of deleting, reinstalling and unplugging we couldn’t get the HTC U11’s Alexa to ‘see’ our Hue lights with the Philips Hue Skill.

Alexa on phones isn’t quite the ultra-streamlined dream just yet, which is perhaps one reason Amazon didn’t go for an instant Android-wide roll-out. For example, you can’t yet use it to control Spotify on the HTC U11. You’ll just be told it’s “not supported on this device”. And it can’t do things like send text messages or open apps either.

Skills can bridge these gaps to an extent, but we’re a way off where we need to be for Alexa to be genuinely useful. Or easy to use for people who don’t spend their lives tinkering with tech.

The HTC U11’s Edge Sense has a similar problem. What promises to be the best thing about it is yet to land: the ability to have it work contextually in any app at all.

So if you're after coffee shops in Google Maps, you should be able to 'code' that to a short press. Or if you want to open the pro mode on the camera, a long press will do that rather than opening the selfie mode.

The problem is this functionality isn't coming until months after launch. We want to be able to squeeze the phone when Spotify is live to play/pause, but have it open the camera from the home screen.

And one final thing: it’s not sensitive enough. Well, that’s not quite accurate: it’s too sensitive sometimes if you set the pressure levels lower, and too hard to grip and activate at other times.

That’s because you don’t hold your phone precisely the same way each time, and the extra effort to grip the sides isn’t a natural movement.

Overall, we like what HTC is doing in terms of trying to innovate here… it just doesn’t quite work well enough. There is something here though, and maybe when the final customizing capability appears this feature will be a must-have.

But right now, it takes effort to relearn how to hold your phone – and given that Edge Sense is probably the headline feature of the U11, not launching it fully finished is a big opportunity missed.

Interface

• Clean interface
• Fast performance
• Google apps aren't always the best substitute

The interface on the HTC U11 is still as slick as ever; while Sense is no longer the leader in terms of our favorite Android overlay, it’s still up there.

The decision to flip to Google’s suite of apps, rather than loading HTC phones with duplicate apps, keeps things clean. For the most part this works, as the Google apps are pretty good.

However, there are some areas where having Google’s does get rather in the way: for instance, Google Photos still feels like it would rather always have an internet connection, and doesn’t show all your pictures instantly, instead asking you to choose which folders to display.

If you take a screenshot, you expect to be able to see it in the gallery, and while it’s easy enough to find, it doesn’t feel intuitive… and that should be the primary metric when deciding on a user interface.

It’s interesting to note that moving to the HTC U11 from the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus has shown how slick the ‘slide up’ motion on Samsung’s phone is. With that phone you just give the screen an upwards swipe and you’ll get into your list of apps – it’s like what Google is doing with Nougat.

HTC’s stuck with the older version of the user interface, and it doesn’t feel as advanced. There are some Nougat features in there – being able to go split-screen, for instance – but this is mostly very familiar territory, and could do with an overhaul.

And while we appreciate that it’s probably early software, the HTC U11 does suffer from some judder at times, with some apps playing up a touch.

It’s nothing major, but it borders on glitchy every so often… not what we’re expecting from a big flagship, but unfortunately a common problem as companies rush to launch with the best and brightest software.

That said, this phone is insanely powerful. With the Snapdragon 835 CPU on there, along with 4GB of RAM, everything generally whipped along pretty quickly, and the Geekbench score of 6312 is up there with the very best at the moment, the benchmarking app lauding the raw power offered by the HTC U11.

It’s a shame to see what’s happened to BlinkFeed (the feed of information on the screen to the left of the main home screen); four years ago it seemed like a genuinely powerful reason to buy an HTC phone, but since then it’s eroded to the point of being useless.

The problem is twofold: firstly, the layout of the information, which is a mixture of your calendar, social networks and curated news feeds, is a visual mess compared to other apps on the market right now.

The second issue is that it’s now filled with sponsored ads, coming far too regularly – it’s understandable that HTC is trying to find ways to bolster revenue, but it jars when you’ve just spent so much money on a phone only to be served with ads.

News Republic, the app that underpins the news aggregation, isn’t intuitive enough either – some of the things it suggests are just nonsense given the topics we asked to see, and it doesn’t seem to learn that well either.

Ultimately, we found browsing Twitter was a more enticing experience; turning BlinkFeed down to just social networks was useful, but with the ads as well still too irritating.

Sense Companion

• Genuinely impressive at times
• Needs to do more

Sense Companion is something we approach with trepidation… because it sounds almost too good to be true.

An artificial intelligence (AI) app of sorts, it’ll look at the weather where you are, your calendar, your battery level and daily usage to give you insights on how to use your phone better.

Got an appointment later in the evening and your battery’s dwindling? You’ll get a notification when you’re still at work, when you can do something about it.

Or been using the phone a little too much today? You’ll get a notification telling you that you’re in the ‘above average’ usage category, with a rundown of what apps you’re using.

It’ll even tell you where to eat at a particular time of the day if you’ve got location settings enabled.

In terms of how genuinely useful the app is to use… well, it’s not quite HTC's promised AI assistant, but it’s helpful. Being told daily we’re above average for our usage isn’t fun, but probably true. The battery notifications are useful as well, if a little too regular.

However, it doesn’t quite go far enough. The usage prompt doesn’t offer any tips on what to do – we ended up downloading Forest, an app that encourages you to put your phone down, but that’s something Sense Companion could have offered.

And the lunch notifications aren’t useful enough – most of the time we don’t want to eat out, and when we do we know how to use Google to find a place.

With a bit of work, Sense Companion could be genuinely useful… but it’s not quite there yet, which is starting to feel a bit like a common theme with this phone.

• Very impressive performance
• Strong HDR capabilities
• Shutter speed lag irritates

The camera on the HTC U11 is a 12MP affair, with only a single lens to speak of – there's no double sensor here, as we're starting to expect on flagship phones.

That doesn't really matter here, thankfully, as HTC has packed in some good technology for the single camera, and as a result you'll largely get excellent snaps.

The HTC U11 has been tipped by imaging analysts DxOMark as the best cameraphone on the market following its extensive battery of tests, and while we've seen other high-scoring phones not actually have brilliant day-to-day cameras, the U11 is more than capable.

The main feature it's sporting is the HDR Auto mode, which combines the best parts of three snaps into one every time you chop the shutter.

It's a feature that was particularly prominent on the Google Pixel, which coincidentally enough HTC also manufactured, so it knows what needed to be done in making a good image.

There are a range of mode options with the camera as well, with professional mode giving a wide range of options to tune up your snaps, and the ability to capture in raw if you like getting all the data from the sensor to manipulate.

Like on the HTC 10, once you've taken a picture in raw mode Google Photos can enhance it further for you, working out the correct exposure  and often making the picture even clearer.

However, even with a monumentally strong processor on board this still takes a while – it is faster than last year, but you won't be able to do this for every photo you take as it'll take up far too much of your life.

The other thing that HTC still hasn't solved with its phones is a slight touch of shutter lag. It's always been one of the slower phones to respond to the touch when you want to take a photo, and while the U11 is quicker than before there's still a noticeable pause when you want to take a snap.

This is particularly infuriating when you're trying to grab a picture of a child or an animal that isn't holding completely still, and considering that HTC is making a big deal about the fact the U11 can focus in 0.3 seconds this is an odd performance.

We don't want to make this sound like a huge problem – it's a blink of an eye slower – but it is noticeable, and it means that when you use the squeezable sides of the HTC U11 to take a picture you're always worried that the framing will be off, as the squeeze itself seems to shake the phone a little.

You'll get used to it, but even at the lowest squeeze level you're still going to get some shudder with the effort of clenching your palm.

It's still much easier to use the volume-down key to do the same thing – it's more intuitive and takes less effort than using Edge Sense.

The front-facing camera on the HTC U11 is one of the better examples out there, letting in loads of light in the 16MP sensor and an f/2.0 and make the pictures more clear.

This is necessary as there's no flash from the phone itself on the front 16MP sensor, but it's a better option in our opinion - the low light performance and sharpness from the selfie camera is one of the very best we’ve seen.

The video recording on the HTC U11 is, once again, among the very best we've seen from a smartphone. The lack of distortion at a gig or generally loud scene is unbelievable, and combined with the 4K sharpness on offer it leads to some stunning videos.

The sound is properly recorded in 3D thanks to more microphones being packed in, and you can even zoom into the action and have the sound follow, the U11 intelligently working out where the audio is coming from and following the focus.

We’re not sure that it’s a necessary function to have – it’s super-cool, but it only works well when trying to video something from far away in a noisy environment, and zoomed in video always borders on the grainy.

However, for a kid's school play or recital, it's the perfect feature.

Camera samples

Battery

• Lasts pretty well
• Boost+ does well to keep things in check

The battery life on the HTC U11 comes from a 3000mAh power pack, and it's actually much better than we were expecting.

HTC has always had a problem with getting the best out of its batteries, and the worry every time we use a phone from the brand is that we'll spend too much time hanging around a power outlet, just in case.

Thankfully it seems that things aren't anywhere near as bad with the new HTC, and that largely seems to be due to the HTC Sense Companion / Boost+ technology working in tandem to learn your habits well.

This means things like noting which apps you're using in which ways, so if you don't need all the pixels from the screen for some functions it'll automatically fire up fewer – going to HD mode doesn't really seem to make much difference visually, but overall it seems to have a good effect on the battery life.

Well, at least that could be the case. The graphs that the U11 will throw at you when suggesting battery optimizations show two lines: one that highlights your current usage, and one that shows what you could be getting if you take certain actions.

We've no way of telling whether the claimed increase in battery life is correct, but being able to toggle on certain things allows you to make some decisions on whether you need the extra power.

Sure, your favorite graphically-intensive game looks sublime in QHD, but is it worth the cost of an hour's battery life? Probably – but at least you'll know what happened at the end of the day when you're reaching for the charger.

The HTC U11 packs Sense Companion, as previously discussed, and while it's rudimentary over battery tips, it does work – when it notes that you've got something in the calendar that evening and you're starting to get low about mid-afternoon, you'll receive a gentle prompt to get charging.

That only works if you properly use your calendar, however – which many of us don't do, only putting in the odd thing. If you've got a shared calendar at work Sense Companion will also spot meetings or dinners for your co-workers, so the notification from the assistant isn't really needed.

Then again, it's no bad thing being prompted to charge if you want to have the whole night without battery worry - even if you are just going home to weep into a lasagne for one.

It's a shame there's no wireless charging on the HTC U11, and we're pretty sure that's a cost-saving exercise. HTC told us during a pre-brief that it was omitted for 'convenience', as the charging speeds weren't good enough yet – but surely the most convenient thing is to have the phone charging in a number of ways?

Given there's no metal back here to cover up a wireless charging connector, this feels like a missed opportunity, especially when the iPhone 8 inevitably cuts the wires for powering up, making the U11 look far behind in terms of spec.

In terms of day-to-day battery performance, we were generally pretty happy with the HTC U11. It’s not the best on the market, but with medium usage it would generally make it happily through the day. 

It’s at its best when you’re not turning on the screen, as its background sleep mode is rather advanced indeed at working out what needs to be stopped from drawing power – and only improves with Boost+ tinkering away behind the scenes.

However, we couldn’t ever get the HTC U11 to last comfortably into the next day, so while it’s a decent performance it’s not as good as some of the other top performers on the market.

We ran our standard Full HD battery test, looping video for 90 minutes at full brightness, and the HTC U11 didn’t fare well: 22% lost over the time is on the lower side, with the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus managing 19% and 14% drops respectively.

So battery life is, well, fine. It won't wow you, but it'll do.

• Excellent audio performance
• Great in-box headphones
• Dedicated DAC to make your current headphones sound better

The audio performance is one of the best reasons to pick up the HTC U11, with it offering strong clarity and all the tools you could want right out of the box – including Hi-Re Audio playback, if you’ve got any high-quality files kicking around.

The first thing that HTC is offering is its USonic headphones, which bring decent sound for a set that come bundled with a phone. 

Some have noted that they're a bit bass-heavy, but for earbuds that feels like a good thing to have achieved, given the smaller space for the drivers.

Secondly, they offer noise cancellation... apparently. They pack microphones in to read the ambient noise and provide a more isolated audio experience, although they’re nowhere near as good as a pair of noise-cancelling over-the-ear cans.

It’s probably partly down to the noise isolation offered by bigger headphones, but using the USonic headphones on a plane was only a little bit better than using a decent pair of buds without power-sapping noise cancelling.

Either way, the sound is more encompassing, and feels more direct. You also use the bundled headphones to scan the inside of your ear and create a personal audio profile, which is pretty cool, and the resulting effect does sound more impressive.

You can make things even more defined by listening to a set of noises in a quiet room to work out the level of frequency your ears are able to discern, which also seems to work well and is worth doing.

While it’s annoying that HTC has dropped the headphone jack on the U11 (we’re still not in a place where forcing this decision on consumers is a good idea – and it’s not like this phone is massively thin) the bundled adaptor is excellent.

It’s not only more robust than the one Apple offers, but it’s also got a digital amplifier inside, so whichever headphones you plug in they’re going to sound better. It does draw power, but not a lot, and it really improves the sound quality.

The final element is the HTC U11’s Boomsound speaker setup. There are two speakers, but HTC has stuck with the plan of splitting the sound between high-end and mid/bass levels, with the former coming out the earpiece and the latter firing downwards at the bottom of the phone.

This means it’s easy to cover the loudest speaker, and when holding the phone in the hand the sound quality doesn’t work as well.

However, HTC has added a clever trick into the U11: place the phone down on a flat surface and the resonance chambers expand, with the improvement in sound quality marked. However, this is only any good if you’re playing music, as for video you want the phone propped up, so you’ll lose the impressive quality.

We still wish there were two speakers firing forward on the HTC U11, like on the One series of old. They worked well and looked iconic… but those days have passed. 

If you like listening to music on a phone, then the HTC U11 has got it all: excellent bundled buds, clever audio algorithms, a strong headphone adaptor and good external playback.

The HTC U11 is a brilliant phone... but in a world already populated by brilliant phones. From the stunning rear glass to the speedy internals to the strong camera to the insanely good audio to the improved (and smart) battery, it's almost hard to find fault with this phone.

But like its recent predecessors, the HTC U11 struggles to attract the attention it merits. It doesn't have the wow factor of the Samsung Galaxy S8's massive Infinity Display, nor the impressive slow motion video capture and HDR movie playback of the Sony Xperia XZ Premium.

Since its launch we've also had the iPhone X, Google Pixel 2 XL, Huawei Mate 10 Pro and even the Samsung Galaxy S9, which now makes it a tougher sell.

What HTC has done is create a brilliantly competent phone, and tried to innovate by letting you squeeze the sides… but sadly its headline feature doesn't impress.

If it had come with the improved software that lets you customize the squeeze to whatever you wanted, then this would be a very strong phone... we can see the potential for being able to use pressure as a multi-function button when holding your phone, but we've currently no idea if HTC will integrate it properly.

The same goes for having Alexa functionality built in... it's not there yet. We're not sure why HTC would launch this phone without these key features, but such is the rate of smartphone feature innovation now that it seems any brand is looking to just get something out half-finished and then iterate, rather than wait for it to be fully-baked.

Who's it for?

The HTC U11 is, firstly, one for fans of the brand. Its Sense UI hasn't been overhauled for this new handset, and that will please those who like the intelligence the software offers.

HTC's Sense Companion and Boost+ could be seen as intrusive by some, but anyone who’s accepting of the mission HTC is on will really appreciate this functionality. 

The design is alternative, and while it's a fingerprint magnet, the two-tone curved glass is a badge of honor – this is a phone  that we came to love holding and showing off. 

But ultimately, the HTC U11 is the phone for anyone who wants a good-looking phone that can take great pictures and offers one of the best sonic experiences around. Annoyingly it's still a little expensive for what's on offer, but the price should come down over time.

Should I buy it?

If you're in two minds over whether to buy the HTC U11, then see if you can take it for a test drive. You should only really buy it if you value your audio experience on a smartphone and don't mind using a dongle for your fancy headphones that still have a 3.5mm jack (because they ALL still do).

You'll need to not mind forking out a little more money than it's really worth... but if you wait a month or two the price should have dropped to a more palatable level.

If you're buying this phone for the squeezable sides – don't. Just don't. It's a nice idea, but it's one that seems like a good idea on paper but doesn't really translate. We're looking forward to trying this method of interaction out once it's fully-implemented in July, but for now it's a gimmick.

The HTC U11 is a strong – very strong – phone. But it's still one that will only really impress those who want something that looks a bit different, have an affinity to HTC and respect good quality audio from a phone, rather than a handset that will wow you the second you hold it in your hand.

Not convinced that the HTC U11 is for you? Then give these options a try instead

Samsung Galaxy S8

This is our phone of the year so far, and the reason why is simple: it does everything well, and combines this performance with a stunning look that nothing else on the market is really offering right now.

The Infinity Display is the main event of this phone, and while some are unsure about the new longer screen ratio it's a powerhouse of battery life, gaming prowess and snapping capabilities.

The downside is the sky-high price, and that's where the HTC U11 wins out... but the Galaxy S8 does almost everything HTC's new phone does, and in a slightly slicker package.

Read our Samsung Galaxy S8 review

LG G6

Keep an eye on the LG G6, as it’s a handset that will only get better with time… because the price will come down, and that will increase the appeal of this phone no end.

It’s already a strong proposition, as it offers a large display that’s similar to Samsung’s, a decent dual-sensor camera, a smart interface and good build quality.

However, it relies on older hardware, so there aren’t that many jumps forward here… and the price is still rather high as a result.

Read our LG G6 review

Sony Xperia XZ Premium

If you’re not against the design language of the Sony range, then the XZ Premium is a real contender this year. 

The 4K screen is HDR-compatible, so is capable of showing some brilliant movies – and it’ll only get better with time as more mobile-optimized content appears from the likes of Netflix and Amazon.

The Super Slomo video capture is awesome as well – it’s a little fiddly perhaps, but the results are just awesome, as you can see below.

Read our Sony Xperia XZ Premium review

First reviewed: May 2017

Good news, Aussie stock Android fans – you'll soon be able to get your first taste of Google's revised Android One mobile OS, said to be as close to a 'Pure Android' experience as you can get, with the Australian release of the mid-range HTC U11 Life handset on March 14, 2018.  

Released last year in the US and UK, the HTC U11 Life is similar in design to its flagship big brother, the HTC U11, in that it shares the same squeezable sides (adding another layer of interactivity for handsy users) and a shiny, curved rear.

The facts of Life

The HTC U11 Life also boasts a 16MP camera with Phase Detection Autofocus and HDR Boost on the back of the phone, and another 16MP front-facing camera with UltraPixel light sensitivity that allows for low-light selfies. 

The handset is also IP67-certified against water and dust, and comes with a pair of HTC USonic earbuds in the box. The phone does not have a headphone jack, so you'll need to plug them into the handset's USB Type-C port using an adapter. While the U11 did ship with the adaptor in the box, there is no news yet on whether the U11 Life will also come with one.

As of next week, you'll be able to purchase the HTC U11 Life outright from the HTC website for $599 in Brilliant Black. Alternatively, you also have the option of picking it up on a 12, 24 or 36-month contract from Vodafone on one of its $30, $40, $50, $60, $80 and $100 Red Plans.

• We could get our first taste of Android P later this month

We still don’t have a clear idea of what the design of the HTC U12 will be and the latest leak provides some additional clues, suggesting that it could be a lot like the HTC U11, but with a few differences.

According to a "trusted source" speaking to HTC Source, the HTC U12 will have a curved glass back and a metal frame, with a fingerprint scanner on the back. That makes it sound a lot like the HTC U11 Plus, but apparently the HTC U12 will have a dual-lens camera rather than a single lens one.

That’s a rumor we’ve heard before and it’s not the only change detailed here, as the source also says that the phone will have a new matt white finish, which could give it a different look and feel to most glass-clad handsets.

Other colors may be available

Though while not specified here it’s likely that there will be versions of the phone in other colors as well.

For now we’d take all this information with a pinch of salt, but the details – other than that white finish – seem to match up with earlier images of the phone.

And while we still haven’t had a truly clear look at the HTC U12 yet we do have a good idea of the specs, as a recent leak detailed them in full, with highlights including a 5.99-inch QHD+ screen, a Snapdragon 845 chipset and 6GB of RAM.

• The HTC U12 might land in March or April

Via GSMArena

News of the HTC U12 has so far been fairly thin on the ground, and the phone was nowhere to be seen at MWC 2018, but we now have a much better idea of what to expect from it – and when we might see it – thanks to a new leak.

LlabTooFeR, who’s accurately leaked HTC information in the past, took to Twitter to share the specs of the HTC Imagine (believed to be the HTC U12), revealing that it has a 5.99-inch QHD+ display, a top-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset and up to 6GB of RAM.

Apparently the phone also has a dual-lens 12MP and 16MP camera pair on the back, an 8MP front-facing camera with HTC Face Unlock, up to 256GB of storage, a 3420mAh battery, and IP68 certification – which would mean it’s dust-proof and water-resistant to depths of 1.5 meters for up to 30 minutes.

Coming soon with squeezy sides

The HTC U12 is said to run Android Oreo, overlaid with HTC’s Sense 10 interface, and to have Edge Sense 2.0, which would be a new version of the squeezy sides found on the likes of the HTC U11 and HTC U11 Plus. 

They also say that it will have full Project Treble support, so updates should be speedy, and that it will come in both single and dual-SIM versions.

In follow-up posts LlabTooFeR adds that the U12 will have a microSD card slot but no 3.5mm headphone port, and even gives an idea of the release date, saying it should land sometime in April, so we might not have long to wait.

As always we’d take this information with a pinch of salt, but as sources go LlabTooFeR is fairly solid, and the specs all sound believable. If they’re right about the release date we should soon know whether they’re right about everything else.

• These could be the first photos of the HTC U12

 In May last year I was at a dinner to celebrate 20 years of the HTC brand. Chialin Chang, the newly-anointed president of smartphones, raised a glass to the past, and someone enthusiastically screamed “and here’s to 20 years more!”.

But just a few months later Chang has left his post, with HTC telling TechRadar: “We can confirm Chialin Chang has resigned from his position as President of the Smartphone and Connected Devices Business at HTC. 

"We thank him for his dedication to the Company for the last six years and wish him well in his future endeavors.”

Chang’s departure comes in the wake of Google buying half of HTC’s smartphone operation, essentially taking the heart of the phone division and putting it to work making new Pixel handsets. 

To the outside world HTC looks near to death, a smartphone brand limping to its demise after years of losses, and certainly not looking a cert for another 20 years of life.

Detractors will argue the writing seems to have been on the wall for a long time, saying HTC no longer seemed to know what kind of company it was, and was trading on past success without taking action to maintain it. 

Where once it was the steely underdog of the smartphone world, the perennial thorn in the side of its better-funded rivals, it had been reduced to making ‘me-too’ devices. 

Good devices, true, but largely no better than the other great phones that consumers are blessed with being able to pick from. HTC has gone from being unique enough to warrant a place in debates about the best smartphones on the market to making phones that are good in some areas, but behind the market in others.

With the loss of Chang, the constant losses and the bulk of the smartphone business being sold, it would be easy to conclude that HTC is on the way out. But there are reasons to think we could still a phoenix company rise from the ashes.

A better past

To predict the future here, first we need to look at what happened in the past, and there the tale of HTC is has two competing narratives.

One is of a company that lost its nerve at crucial times and made poor decisions, but the other is that HTC had the misfortune to butt up against an industry that favors those with deeper pockets and larger resources.

In the early years, HTC was one of the most impressive companies in the smartphone space. The first phone I ever used when I joined TechRadar back in 2008 was the HTC Touch Diamond 2, and it was entrancing. 

It made Windows Mobile usable, with the TouchFlo interface on top making the clunky Microsoft operating system something more desirable. 

That handset was followed by phones like the HTC HD2, a cult device that still sees developers trying to get the latest Android operating systems running on it despite it using hardware that’s approaching a decade old.

HTC kept doing things with Windows Mobile that shouldn’t really have been possible, so when it became one of the key manufacturers at the birth of Android few were surprised: one of the darlings of the nascent smartphone industry running around the Google campus was as close to a certainty for success as it was possible to find.

The HTC Dream (AKA the T-Mobile G1), the HTC Magic and the HTC Hero were all brilliant phones that ran with little power but packed in so much usability, with the latter phone giving birth to HTC Sense, the software that showed the customization possibilities available with Android, and which propelled HTC to even greater heights.

“Heart and love of product was what made us successful in the beginning, not just being a first mover,” a key ex-employee of HTC told me, under condition of anonymity. “Because back then, that really was enough and we could keep up that momentum.”

That momentum led to the creation of the HTC Desire in 2010, a phone that was the first true iPhone rival on the market in the eyes of anyone who wasn’t an Apple fan. It had power, a clean design and a lovely OLED screen to look at.

It was superior technically to the iPhone in so many ways, worked in a slick manner and cost less… and the halo effect translated into sales, and a golden period for the company.

By 2011 HTC was one of the biggest smartphone brands in the US – a tricky market to succeed in. Sales were increasing, and things were looking rosy.

This burgeoning success was overseen by CEO Peter Chou, a man who some compared to Steve Jobs due to his enthusiasm to create phones that were a fusion of usability and design. 

His engineering background gave him a precise eye for detail; he wanted every HTC phone to have a common design language, and software packed with features to delight users. 

(When I met him years ago in London, he spent an incredibly large amount of time chatting about the weather widget – yes, it packed far more information on a phone screen than others of the time, but it was that attention to detail that marked him out as a ‘progressive’ CEO at the time).

However, even at the height of the company’s success, signs of a brand that wasn’t quite in control of its destiny were starting to appear.

Alongside the HTC Desire launched the HTC Legend, a beautiful metal phone with a more attractive feel in the hand and packing a more vibrant screen. 

However, this phone was hidden in the shadows, locked only to certain networks on exclusive deals that meant it would never be given the exposure it deserved.

History obviously shows that Chou never hit the same heady heights as Jobs, quietly exiting his position in 2015 (and the company a year later), but for a few years HTC was the most ‘worthy’ competitor to Apple, doing so much on far fewer resources than rivals.

Teetering on the edge

But it was in HTC’s attempts to follow up the Desire’s success that things started to wobble, as the company tried to level-up from a small ODM to genuine smartphone Goliath.

Phones like the Desire HD and HTC Sensation appeared with muted fanfare due to an overly-complicated user experience or poor battery life, and the brand’s part-purchase of audio brand Beats never resulted in better handsets. 

(The special edition Sensation XE, for instance, basically had Beats’ branding and a slightly tuned audio experience – it didn’t feel like the best use of a brand that Apple would one day buy for billions).

The HTC One X appeared in 2012 to try and right things, but this was another ‘me too’ phone in the world of similar-looking devices – plastic design, fine camera, iffy battery. HTC wasn’t doing anything new.

But in 2013, it did do something new. HTC managed something that few other brands have ever managed: it rebooted, and forced its way back to the top of the smartphone game, at least critically, with its new range of ‘One’ smartphones.

The HTC One, and the follow-up One M8 were (stupid naming conventions aside) two of the best phones I’ve ever held… the M8, in particular, achieving that impossible feat of being an even better sequel to a wildly impressive first effort.

HTC was zagging when the industry was zigging… metal unibody, amazing cameras that focused on what the user wanted, and an interface that really brought extra functionality to users’ lives. 

Features like HTC Zoe – which captured short videos with each shot and spliced them into little movies – were ahead of their time and very similar functionality can be seen in the iPhone with Apple's Live Photos.

Proof of the improvement was palpable. A key HTC marketing exec told me he had been practically begging the networks in the US to take the HTC One, but those same conversations were much, much easier the following year when the One M8 was vying for space on store shelves.

The slide

But in 2015, the company lost its nerve. The HTC One M9 was barely an improvement on the One M8 – just polished a little bit. The amazing dual-camera (again, sound familiar?) was lost in favor of a boring, off-the-shelf sensor.

Instead of doubling down, HTC made another me-too phone. Other brands were catching up with some of the features that had made the One series of smartphones so awesome, and HTC seemed to panic and just try to spec-match, rather than innovate. 

Key staff began to leave, and it seemed the recipe for the special sauce that had gone into its flagship phones was disappearing with them.

“HTC had the ‘first mover’ advantage, but eventually other companies like Samsung and LG were able to use their [lower-priced] components and [wider] distribution to overpower HTC,” said the anonymous HTC employee.

“We couldn't see that from the inside. What we saw was our software / UX advantage and our cool designs. When Samsung's design started finally catch up we had no advantages left. Except for heart.

“So many people poured every ounce of their passion into HTC. Heart and love of product was what made us successful in the beginning, not just being a first mover. Because back then that really was enough and we could keep up that momentum.”

HTC’s next phones – the HTC 10 and HTC U11 – were good, and in some areas (music, for instance) excellent… but it was apparently too little, too late. HTC found itself running into the same issue time and again: it was big enough to be innovative, but too small to fight the marketing power and buying power of the incumbent brands.

It was also starting to focus on the popular HTC Vive VR headset, which was turning far more heads than any of its flagship smartphones.

That said, HTC chose  terrible marketing strategies at times too for its handsets. The multi-million campaign to hire Robert Downey Jr led to some excruciating advertising (anyone remember Hipster Troll Carwash?) with Downey Jr having creative control over the ads themselves.

Perhaps the writing was already on the wall for HTC’s ex-smartphone president Chang at the very start of his stewardship last year.

At a round table, when asked what HTC was planning to do in order to reverse the slide it found itself experiencing, he told me: “We’ll target the old HTC users, premium users who compare Android phones, and make sure we have a dynamic sentiment analysis, which we didn’t do very well in the past. 

“We’ll find what sort of message they want to see more of and adjust accordingly… a more targeted approach. 

“At the end of the day [those users] want to see the real phone, and messaging consistent with that real phone and how they perceive the brand. Brand is obviously taking time to build, it’s not an overnight thing.”

Any brand that tries to recapture its past glories in the smartphone market is doomed to fail, if all it wants to do is remind people why it used to be good. What it needs to do instead is focus entirely on being different, relevant and exciting.

This is where the comparison with the Nokia brand comes in. Now run by HMD Global, a new company featuring a raft of ex-Nokia employees – and ironically, some from HTC – as well as working with Foxconn (the factory manufacturer of the iPhone, among other brands), Nokia has gone from nowhere to selling millions of phones in the space of a year.

In fact, Nokia phones are now outselling handsets from OnePlus and Google – but that doesn’t really tell the whole story. HMD Global has only put out one ‘high-end’ phone, the Nokia 8, and none offering the kind of performance the true flagships on the market can boast.

No - Rather than headline-grabbing flagship features, Nokia’s success is the result of fusing a well-known brand with good build quality and decent specs in key components like the battery and camera... but on cheaper phones.

Nothing about its handsets is earth-shattering, but Nokia is drawing on a heritage of strong performance in these areas, and updating it for a market in which smartphones are largely commoditized.

And that’s where HTC’s strength can still lie. It’s hard to say how strong that heritage is now, given that half of the smartphone staff have moved to Google, but if enough remains of the engineering team and facilities, there’s still a chance that we’ll continue to see HTC phones on shelves in years to come.

The first thing the company has to do is forget about high-end flagship phones. Ex-smartphone president Chang talked last year about ‘halo’ devices that would cast a glow onto the rest of the HTC range, but that strategy only works if those flagship phones are selling in droves, causing consumers who want the expensive model, but can’t afford it, to look at the lower-priced options.

The smartphone world is different now. The SIM-free phone is growing rapidly in popularity, people are holding onto devices for longer, and they’re looking for value for money with an upgrade. A cheap phone now needs to not only work well, but offer perceived innovation too.

• Your future smartphone could be free

A recent tour of HTC’s Taiwanese facilities showed that there’s still a rich vein of that innovation running through the brand. In a set of drawers in the main HQ, there are multiple prototype variants of the company’s flagship handsets over the years, ranging from differently-shaped camera holes on the premium phones of yesteryear to smart takes on a gaming handset… sadly I wasn’t able to take pictures, nor am I able to go into more detail here, but creativity has been part of the HTC picture for years.

The imaging and audio development departments that brought us the impressive HTC One and HTC 10 still pack the same facilities that launched those handsets, and there’s a real care taken in the creation of each handset, with 50 people handling a device before it’s shipped out to the consumer.

The brand still is taking a bullish stance on its future, stating (somewhat blandly) to TechRadar: "HTC remains fully committed to our branded smartphone business, and we have an exciting 2018 product pipeline."

Reinventing itself won’t be an easy task – but if HTC forgets about putting high-end features in high-end phones and focuses on infusing cheaper phones with better cameras, audio and design, those handsets can become a very strong proposition against brands that are less well-known.

That’s how HTC can remind users of its heritage. It’s always sad to see a once-great brand falling from the peak of the smartphone game, but the market has shifted and HTC didn’t have the scale to compete… will it still be able to turn things around?

• Why our phones still aren't powered by the sun

Update: We've now got our hands on an HTC One X complete with Android 4.0.4 and Sense 4.1 - read on to see if it really makes that much of a difference.

The HTC One X brings the best processor, an HD screen and a sublimely thin chassis as the Taiwanese firm looks to recreate the success of the original Desire.

The One X is a phone that's had us intrigued for a while - running a quad core CPU (Nvidia's Tegra 3) plus one of the largest screens on any HTC… and that's without being given a gargantuan name like the Titan.

It's clear from the outset what HTC is trying to do with the One X: shake off the slight doom and gloom surrounding the brand's fall in profits, and bring out a slick, powerful and, more importantly, useable handset.

It seems that HTC may have hidden its upcoming flagship – currently known as the HTC U12 – in plain sight recently, but if so it clearly didn’t do a good enough job.

HTC brought a few handsets to a 5G Industry Alliance event in Taiwan, including an unknown device with stickers obscuring many of the details, but which was caught on camera by Sogi.com.tw.

What those stickers couldn’t hide is the super-widescreen, likely 18:9 aspect ratio of the display – a feature that’s common on recent flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S8, but not found on the HTC U11.

Looks legit

The phone also doesn’t appear to have a fingerprint scanner on the front, so it’s probably on the back, unless it’s been dropped altogether.

Now, while this device may not be the HTC U12, it looks to be high-end, and reputable leaker Evan Blass claims that it “apparently” is the U12. It also lines up with an earlier leaked render, so there’s a good chance he’s right.

Whatever the case, we’re expecting to get an official look at the HTC U12 soon, but not quite as soon as you might expect, as it’s unlikely to land at this month’s MWC 2018, with rumors instead pointing to a March or April launch.

• We may not see many phones from HTC this year

Via Phandroid

We weren't expecting HTC to launch its next flagship phone at MWC 2018 in Barcelona at the end of February, but it's now all but confirmed with rumors matching our initial thoughts.

In recent years, HTC's presence at MWC hasn't been as significant as firms such as Samsung, Sony and Huawei, with a booth away from the main hall where most of the big names reside, and no press conference to speak of.

This led us to believe that the launch of the HTC U12 wouldn't be until after the huge mobile gathering in Barcelona, and now AndroidHeadlines has word from an inside source that "the company is planning to host a separate event after MWC, though we were not given a specific date, but it will probably land in either March or April."

• Everything we know so far about the HTC U12

HTC's got form

Take a look back at HTC's last couple of flagship launches, and it's even more clear that an MWC arrival for the U12 was always unlikely.

The HTC U11 launched in May 2017, while the HTC 10 showed up in April 2016. You've got to go back to 2015 and the launch of the HTC One M9 for its last significant MWC appearance.

We'll be reporting live from MWC to bring you all the latest launches, news and hands on reviews, although if you're hoping for anything new from HTC, don't hold your breath.

• The Samsung Galaxy S9 will arrive at MWC 2018

The HTC U11 Plus is a new version of the HTC U11 with this season's must-have: an extended screen that barely leaves any surround cluttering up the front. And that is, for the most part, it.

However, a few millimetres added to the height of the HTC U11 Plus have enabled cramming-in a bigger battery to compensate for the larger screen. Plus a little extra for good measure.

If HTC's 2017 line-up never appealed, the HTC U11 Plus may not have anything new to awake your interest. And it arrives just before the Samsung Galaxy S9, which may well make some of its tech seem passé.

Those offered the HTC U11 Plus on a contract upgrade have nothing to fear, though. This is a top-quality phone with a high-quality camera, good display and smart design.

HTC U11 Plus price and availability

• Out now
• Costs £699 (around $970/AU$1,215)

The HTC U11 Plus arrived at the start of 2018, and is priced to roughly match the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus. SIM-free you'll pay £699 in the UK, that's around $970/AU$1,215, but there's no plan to bring the phone to the US.

This is a top-end phone, the kind that deserves some research and thought before clicking the "checkout" button. However, it isn't quite as expensive as the iPhone X or Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

Key features

• High-end specs with a high-end price
• Matches top phones of 2017
• Single rear camera

The HTC U11 Plus is a well-spec'd phone, but not one that can claim to have it all. Next to its Samsung and LG rivals, a dual-lens rear camera is the obvious missing part.

It can't take the blurry-background photos that friends might call "arty" on Instagram and Facebook.

We're likely to see phones with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 845 chipset just a few months after the HTC U11 Plus too, set to offer yet more power and improved efficiency.

The rest is largely in-place, though. The HTC U11 Plus has a very high-quality rear camera, if one that is a little slow to shoot, an extra-wide QHD screen and 128GB of storage.

HTC specials include punchy BoomSound speakers and Edge Sense, which lets you launch an app by squeezing the HTC U11 Plus's sides.

Design

• Gorilla Glass 5 and aluminium design
• Slim screen surround
• Rear fingerprint scanner

The HTC U11 Plus has the most popular, most common design style among current ultra-high-end phones. There's curved glass on the back, and a band of metal around its sides to join the front and rear glass panels.

Its look is less dynamic than the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus, though, which has a curved front and even more aggressive cutting of the screen surround. Where it leaves virtually zero dead space to the left and right of the display, the HTC U11 Plus actually has slightly more than the cheaper Honor View 10.

As such, despite the newer display design, this phone is a little bigger and heavier than the HTC U11. Still, it's only as unwieldy as some of the last generation's 5.5-inch phones, even with a 6-inch screen.

The curved rear glass also feels great. HTC has prioritised smooth contours over absolute thinness, as the HTC U11 Plus is relatively thick for such a pricey phone at 8.5mm. But it makes a pleasant change from all the abrupt flat-back phones. HTC calls it a "liquid surface".

This rear glass is highly reflective and comes in dark blue and the dark silvery grey we have here, although there's also word of a translucent model. The standard variants are mirror-like, rather than having a multi-layered finish that plays with light.

Like other recent high-end HTCs, the U11 Plus has the Edge Sense feature, letting you squeeze the phone to act as a shortcut gesture. As standard it launches the camera, probably the most useful option for many, but you can set it to fire up any app you like.

There's 128GB of storage, matching the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus and LG V30. Unless you’re a media or games hoarder you won’t have to offload photos from the HTC U11 Plus for a long, long time.

The most contentious part of the HTC U11 Plus's hardware is its lack of a headphone jack.

You do get a pair of USB earphones in the box, and a 3.5mm jack adaptor, but if you have a beloved pair of wired headphones, you might want to consider the OnePlus 5T or Honor View 10, which are several hundred dollars/pounds cheaper and have a 3.5mm socket.

While there are no particularly cogent technical arguments for leaving out a headphone jack in a phone this large and 8.5mm thick, it probably does make water resistance easier to apply.

The HTC U11 Plus is rated at IP68, meaning it can be submerged in 1.5 metres of water for 30 minutes. IP67, the more common rating, limits the depth to 1 metre.

There's also a fingerprint scanner, sitting on the back, rather than the front as in the HTC U11. It's quick and reliable, and unlike the Samsung Galaxy S8, it does not sit in an awkward position.

Screen

• 6-inch 1440 x 2880 Super LCD6 screen
• 'Cinema' colour
• Slightly limited max brightness

The HTC U11 Plus has a 6-inch 1440 x 2880 LCD screen. If you're not used to the resolutions of this new breed of 18:9 aspect phone, that's the equivalent of a 1440 x 2560 screen like the HTC U11's, with more vertical pixels to fill in the added space.

HTC calls the screen “Super LCD6”, a proprietary take on the IPS tech we see in most good non-OLED phones, tablets and laptops. Turn up the brightness and take the U11 Plus into a dark room and you'll see its black level isn't quite OLED standard.

However, its white tone is clean, and day-to-day you'll be hard-pressed to notice the contrast difference between this and an OLED. It's a phone, not a home cinema.

That said, HTC's big claim for the display is that it can fulfill the DCI-P3 color gamut. This is the range of colors used by the film industry, with much deeper tones than the sRGB standard monitors, phones and printers are traditionally measured against.

You can switch between the sRGB and DCI-P3 standards in the HTC U11 Plus's settings menu. And, sure enough, the DCI mode looks seriously saturated. The sRGB mode is on hand for those who like a more relaxed look, which we actually prefer here.

The one complaint: top brightness does not seem all that high compared with other high-end LCD phones. We didn't struggle to use the HTC U11 Plus outdoors, but we were reviewing from London. It's hardly the sunniest place on Earth, even on bright days.

Battery life

• Fair video playback performance
• Better real-world stamina
• Full day of heavy use, 1.5 days of light use

One of the so-so parts of the older HTC U11 is its battery. It isn't bad but can't keep up with the best of the flagships with which it competes.

HTC has improved things a little with the HTC U11 Plus. It has a 3,930mAh battery, which seems about right for the display size and resolution.

The phone also performs a little better in our standard 90-minute, max brightness video playback test. It took 22% off the HTC U11's battery, and 20% off our HTC U11 Plus.

It's an improvement, but not as good as most of the rivals. The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus loses 11%, the OnePlus 5T 12%, the Honor View 10 15%.

Performance out in the real world doesn't quite display such a massive disparity, though. On a busy midweek day of use we found the HTC U11 Plus tended to have around 30-40% left by bedtime.

While the last wave of phones has seen some real improvements to actual stamina, we'd still class that as a commendable result. And on a less phone-packed Saturday, we found we could easily end up with 50% left by 11pm-midnight.

The HTC U11 Plus isn't the longest-lasting phone in its class. But it'll last through a solid day's use with a bit of change in the tank if you forget to plug it in overnight.

There are no particularly clever battery optimisations, though, just the usual ones. Some recent phones let you change the screen resolution to save some juice. The HTC U11 Plus doesn't.

Camera

• Excellent photo quality, including low light
• Suffers from shutter/processing lag
• No second rear camera for background blur or zoom

The HTC U11 Plus has a 12MP rear camera with a dual-LED flash and optical image stabilization (OIS). It's a reminder the best phone cameras use this resolution, even if there are sensors with 20 megapixels or more.

Images are sharp right down to pixel level, and daylight photos look superb. They're detailed, colorful, dynamic range is great and there's no evidence of HTC's historic problem with overexposure.

Night shots too are great, which is something you don't tend to get in most of the £400-500 alternatives. While low-light images are naturally noisier than day-lit ones, the amount of detail the HTC U11 Plus retains is excellent, and as the rear camera is stabilized getting sharp images is blissfully easy.

The HTC U11 Plus often makes very dark scenes look brighter than they appear to the naked eye, in order to bring out more detail. But it doesn't make them look too unnatural when doing so.

The HDR mode is also excellent. You can shoot a sunset, right into the sun itself, and the foreground won’t be entirely shadowy.

For pure image quality we have no complaints. And the hit rate you get with this phone is among the best, although colour temperature can vary a little between exposures.

The problem with the HTC U11 Plus's camera is shooting performance. There's half a second shutter lag between hitting the button and the exposure. It feels much slower than a phone camera this expensive should.

This lag gets worse in low light. We hope this will improve with a further software update, but we had the same issue with the HTC U11, and that wasn't exactly yesterday.

There's the simplicity of the camera to consider too. There's just the one sensor on the back, so you don’t get shallow depth of field effects or lossless zooming.

Still, the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus has the same single-camera approach. And if your stand-out feature is image quality, you're on the right track.

You can also shoot video at up to 4K at 30fps or 1080p at 60fps, and there are some neat audio tricks. Multiple mics let you record "3D" audio. Listening through a pair of headphones, the positional effect is great considering this is a phone not a field recorder, and so is general audio recording quality.

Judging by our experience with the HTC 11, it'll even do the trick for loud rock gigs.

The front camera has an 8MP sensor, down from a 16MP one in the HTC U11. That sounds like a huge downgrade, but the HTC U11 Plus’ selfies are actually great.

They resolve fine details like facial hairs better than some 13MP selfie cameras, and as the camera isn’t overburdened with megapixels (which with lower sensor surface area tends to cause poorer low light performance) you don't lose this when shooting indoors either.

Camera samples

Interface

• Android 8.0
• Custom HTC software
• Highly tweakable software, includes themes

The HTC U11 Plus runs Android 8.0 with HTC's Sense interface. This time around, HTC has preserved the core feel of simple Android almost completely, even while packing-in plenty of extras.

You flick up from the home screen to bring up the apps menu, like a Pixel 2 XL. There's a degree of inertia to the way the system moves, like a Pixel. And in the notifications drop-down icons slide fluidly from the bottom of the screen, opening up to full notifications, as you scroll.

This doesn't look like a vanilla Android, and it isn't one. But HTC hasn't messed too much with the rhythm of Google's own Pixel interface. That's a good thing.

HTC being HTC, though, there are some add-ons. BlinkFeed is back once more. As ever, it's a rolling newsfeed that takes up a home screen, using News Republic as its source for content.

Fresh out of the box it'll populate the feed with local (to your country) sources. In the UK that means plenty of trashy new stories from tabloid newspapers. You can choose what ends up in BlinkFeed, though, adding different topics, or updates from Facebook and Twitter.

You can also disable BlinkFeed completely, which we'd probably end up doing after a while. Sorry, HTC.

HTC Sense also allows for customisation of the apps menu. Icons can be arranged alphabetically, by date or by most recently used. And you can tweak the grid to make the icons more spaced out.

You get none of this in vanilla Android.

Then there's Edge Sense. This is one of the more advanced applications for the HTC U11 Plus' squeezable sides. Instead of launching an app it brings up a carousel of app shortcuts, and shows a monthly calendar view.

It does seem a little like clutching at ways to make the edge-squeeze gesture seem more useful, though, and we'd rather use it to launch a favorite app.

The HTC U11 Plus is also more obsessed with digital assistants than just about any other phone. Long-press the home soft key and you get Google Assistant. Run HTC Alexa and you get Amazon Alexa access.

There's also HTC Sense Companion, which offers digital post-its based on your location. Next to Assistant and Alexa it seems basic, and we can't imagine many using it much.

Finally, like older versions of Sense, there are themes. These alter wallpapers, fonts and icons. HTC offers its own icon packs too, which let you switch back to the company's old icon style: a tip of the hat to hardcore fans.

The HTC U11 Plus' interface is more complicated, busier, than some, but also offers customization not present in the latest version of Android. It runs well too.

Movies, music and gaming

• Widescreen aspect works for games and films alike
• Loud speaker, but gets a little harsh maxed-out
• No headphone jack

One neat side effect of the new 18:9 aspect screen is the extra space it provides for gamepad-style touchscreen controls in games. Your thumbs infringe on the action less. However, this is a work-in-progress as not all games support 18:9 so far.

Asphalt 8 does, and while many people play this Gameloft racer with tilt control, using your thumbs feels better than ever. Dead Trigger 2, however, continues to run in 16:9, leaving a blank black area to the right of the display.

It's still relatively early days for 18:9 phones, though, and with so many new phones adopting this style, it won't be long until support is in by default.

As you'd hope for a phone at this level, games run very well, with no obvious frame rate drops.

The 18:9 screen works well for movies too, a comfortable middle-ground between "TV style" 16:9 and cinema 21:9. Solid display contrast and great color help as well.

There are also the speakers to consider. The HTC U11 Plus has BoomSound speakers, which in this case means there's a driver on the bottom, and the call speaker joins in to make sure the sound isn't just coming from the bottom edge.

Volume is slightly better than most rivals, but when maxed-out the front driver starts to sound harsh, which does the general sound quality no favors. The Razer Phone has significantly better speakers, but the HTC U11 Plus' are still good.

There are two BoomSound modes too. "Theatre" maximizes bass, while "music" tightens it up for a cleaner sound.

Rather use headphones? You'll either need to use a wireless pair or use a USB adapter, as there's no headphone jack. However, if you're already on-board with Bluetooth headphones the HTC U11 Plus has good streaming cred, with support for aptX HD as well as standard aptX.

Benchmarks

• Classic Snapdragon 835 performance
• Scores 6,710 in Geekbench 4

The HTC U11 Plus has a Snapdragon 835 like several of 2017's flagships, including some variants of the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus, the HTC U11 and LG V30.

This is an octa-core chipset with Kryo cores, the fastest four of which are clocked at 2.45GHz.

In Geekbench 4 the HTC U11 Plus scores 6,710 points, roughly matching the OnePlus 5T and Samsung Galaxy S8. They use the same CPU, so this makes sense.

This is one of the most powerful phones around, but it won’t be for long.

Verdict

The HTC U11 Plus is a great phone likely to be rapidly eclipsed as 2018's new models appear. Its tech is really that of a 2017 phone, which makes sense given this is primarily a design update of last year's HTC U11.

Unless you're desperate for lossless camera zooming or shallow depth of field photos, though, this doesn't really matter.

Having used the phone for a while the one bit we'd really like to change, or get rid of to be more precise, is the camera’s shutter lag.

Who's this for?

The HTC U11 Plus is for people who don’t want an iPhone and don’t want a Samsung. That’s the core of it, because we find it hard to believe many really consider the phone’s squeezable sides a convincing reason to justify a £700 buy.

Should you buy it?

The HTC U11 Plus’s timing is bad. At the time of the phone’s launch, we’d be seriously tempted to see what Samsung has coming up in February (hint: it’ll be another top-end phone).

But if you’re not obsessed with having the latest tech as it appears, there are few reasons to hesitate. As long as you don’t mind the missing headphone jack, anyway.

The HTC U11 Plus is a strong phone, but here are three similarly strong alternatives.

Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus

Samsung, king of Androids, makes the HTC U11 Plus’s clearest rival. And it arrived the best part of a year earlier.

The S8 Plus is as powerful, has a similar-but-faster camera and a more dynamic design that fits an even larger screen into the same footprint. With incoming price cuts for this established phone likely, it’s very tempting.

• Read our full Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus review

LG V30

LG’s latest top-end phone is not another in the “G” series but the V30. It shares several specs with the HTC U11 Plus, including chipset and screen size. The LG has a dual-lens rear camera, but from our testing the HTC pips the V30 for image quality.

• Read our full LG V30 review

OnePlus 5T

If you want to save hundreds, look to the OnePlus 5T instead. It has the same CPU and there’s a 128GB storage option as well.

Photos taken at night may not be quite as clear, screen resolution is much lower and the casing is metal rather than glass, but considering the price, we’d think carefully about this one.

• Read our full OnePlus 5T review

First reviewed: January 2018

The HTC U11 is a great phone, and a few different versions of it have already launched. But, if this leak from Venture Beat's Evan Blass proves true, the HTC U11 Eyes may be the next take on the phone.

The leak shows a device that looks fairly similar to the standard U11, but a few subtle differences are apparent. The screen takes up a bit more space on the front, as it's a 6-inch display with a 1080 x 2160 resolution. The larger display pushes the fingerprint sensor around to the back of the phone.

A little more subtle is the addition of a second selfie camera above the screen. Dual-camera systems on the rear of phones have been cropping up more and more, and they usually enable some form of depth effect to enhance portraits. But, putting the dual-lens setup on the front can bring that functionality to the world of selfies.

Beyond that, the HTC U11 Eyes is shaping up to be a mid-range standout, as it will have a Snapdragon 652 octa-core processor, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage, HTC's signature Edge Sense squeezing control, a beastly 3,930mAh battery and IP67 water and dust protection. 

Though the phone is expected to launch in just a few days, on January 15, it will won't come with Android 8.0 Oreo, instead going with the Nougat of yesteryear.

Via The Verge

• This is the first smartphone with an in-display fingerprint scanner

The HTC U12 is expected to launch in the first half of 2018, and if a leaked render is accurate the Taiwanese firm will be changing up the design of its flagship smartphone.

The render in question was picked up by SuggestPhone, and shows a handset that, if we're honest, looks totally unremarkable. It is a black slab with no defining features - but that's potentially a good thing.

With no interruptions on the front of the device, it may mean the HTC U12 has shifted the fingerprint scanner from the bezel below the screen (which we saw on the U11 and HTC 10) to either the rear of the device - like on the HTC U11 Plus - or within the screen itself. 

There is also the possibility that it takes a leaf out of Apple's book and drops the digit reading tech altogether, instead opting for retina or face recognition instead.

• The phone set to beat the Galaxy S9 to an in-screen fingerprint scanner

More screen

The shifting (or ditching) of the fingerprint scanner does mean there will be space for more screen on the handset. 

HTC is one of the few holdouts when it comes to offering sizable bezels on the front of its smartphones, but the U12 could be the device which jumps on the all-screen bandwagon.

We've already seen this shift start with the introduction of the HTC U11 Plus towards the end of 2017, but its core flagship offering is yet to take the plunge.

In this particular render there appears to be a very slender bezel at the top of the handset, housing the earpiece and front facing camera, but it's difficult to see where the screen starts and stops.

The design doesn't appear to break any new ground though, with HTC potentially just playing catch up, if the leak is accurate. We're unable to verify the source of the image, so there's no guarantee what you see above is genuine. 

• HTC U12: what we want to see

Via PhoneArena

It's been quite a year for HTC, what with price drops for the HTC Vive, the launch of the HTC U11 flagship phone, and the sale of a big chunk of its smartphone operations to Google. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that Google sale, we're going to see fewer HTC phones in 2018 according to reports.

According to DigiTimes, which has a fairly good record in terms of knowing what's coming in the Asian phone supply chain, HTC is going to focus its resources on just a couple of phone launches in 2018.

The first will be the HTC U11 Plus, which we already know a lot about, except when it's actually going to go on sale. The bigger, longer-lasting version of the original U11 should be heading out to selected markets early in the New Year (January 2018, if sources speaking to DigiTimes are to be believed).

Turn it up to 12

The second phone launch HTC has pencilled in for next year is of course the HTC U12, its flagship model for 2018. If it's going to follow the pattern of this year and the HTC U11, we can expect to see the phone make an appearance in May or thereabouts.

It sounds as though the HTC U12 is going to come with a Snapdragon 845 processor, a 4K screen, and a dual-sensor rear camera, according to DigiTimes sources, so it should be able to hold its own against the big boys, on paper at least. Whether it's enough to keep HTC in the smartphone business remains to be seen.

After 2018, who knows? HTC has made some fine phones down the years but has struggled to make a significant dent in terms of market share despite the quality of its handsets. Perhaps focusing on a smaller number of devices will see a change in fortunes.

• HTC will start making dual-camera phones again next year

Via Phandroid

HTC isn’t a company afraid to try new things. In the last few years several of these haven’t panned out too well, like the HTC U Ultra’s second touchscreen, but the HTC U11 Life is a phone with a concept we can appreciate immediately.

It’s a mid-range phone with an accessible price that uses Google’s new Android One program. This means you get an almost untouched version of Android, with the aim of getting much faster updates than other mobiles. That is, unless you're in the US, in which case you get HTC's Sense skin on top.

There are notable shortfalls to match the cut-down price tag, like poor low light photo quality, relatively weak speakers and a body made of plastic. But it’s a solid choice for those on a mid-size budget.

HTC U11 Life price and availability

The HTC U11 Life costs $349/£349 (around AU$460), half the price of top-end alternatives and a lot less than the full-fat HTC U11.

It sees it rub shoulders with the likes of the Honor 9, Moto X4, Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact and Samsung Galaxy A5. These are some seriously strong mid-range contenders which ensure the U11 Life won't have an easy ride.

Key features

• Pressure-sensitive sides help it stand out
• Smart compromises other than the battery

There are two main ways to view the HTC U11 Life. It’s a much cheaper alternative to the original HTC U11 that gets you a roughly similar experience, with some parts cut down to lower costs.

It’s also an Android One phone in most regions, meaning it uses the standard Android interface, making it a little like a Google Pixel phone not made by Google.

Core elements it inherits from its bigger, more expensive brother include a shiny, curved rear and pressure-sensitive sides that enable gestures not seen in other phones.

This is HTC’s attempt to stand out. It may not change how you use a phone, but HTC has made it customizable enough to let you dig deep and make the feature your own.

Cost compromises are, for the most part, not too glaring. The screen is 1080p rather than ultra-high resolution, and the HTC U11 Life’s chipset is a mid-range Snapdragon 630 rather than a top-tier chipset. Major improvement in the graphics chip means it performs well in real life, though.

As is common among mid-range phones, the camera can’t quite compete with the best in all situations. Great photo processing makes day-lit photos often look fantastic, but it falters at night and fine detail isn’t as sharp or clear as that of a higher-quality, lower-resolution sensor.

The build isn’t quite on-par with the HTC U11 either. That phone has a glass back, the U11 Life an acrylic/plastic one. The biggest difference in feel is that while glass is cold to the touch when there’s the slightest chill in the air, plastic isn’t.

You’ll have to decide whether that matters to you or not.

After using the phone for a while the only compromise that we think might annoy some is battery life. While not flat-out poor, the Moto X4 and Honor 9 last longer between charges. The HTC U11 Life’s 2,600mAh battery is just not all that big.

Design

• Smooth plastic/acrylic back
• Fingerprint scanner
• Squeezable pressure-sensitive sides

From arm’s length the HTC U11 Life looks a lot like the normal U11, which is a more expensive phone. The back is curved and shiny, reacting to light as if the stuff gets it excited.

However, the HTC U11 Life’s back is made of “acrylic glass” rather than actual glass. And what’s acrylic glass? Plastic.

There’s none of the cool hardness that comes with metal or glass, and as a result the HTC U11 Life does not feel particularly expensive. The Moto G5S Plus, Moto X4 and Honor 9 all feel more impressive.

The HTC U11 Life’s build is pleasant enough, though. HTC has made sure there are no hard, flat surfaces. Everything is smooth and curvy, while the ultra-accessible 5.2-inch screen welcomes hands of all sizes.

This is not, however, one of the new breed of phones with an ultra-narrow screen surround. There are a couple of blank millimeters to each side, and about an inch above and below the screen.

It seems petty to make too much of an issue of this right now, though, when the trend is only developing, not quite the norm yet. Let your eyes decide whether you’re bothered or not.

Other parts of the HTC U11 Life hardware are sound too. The phone has IP67 water resistance, meaning it can take being submerged, and there’s a good fingerprint scanner on the front.

Some versions of the HTC U11 Life have an excellent 64GB storage too. Ours has “just” 32GB, but buy from HTC and you get 64GB. Ours is the European model, where the US and UK get the 4GB RAM/64GB edition.

The hardware feature that sets the HTC U11 Life apart, though, is Edge Sense. This uses pressure sensors on the sides of the phone to enable gestures when those sides are squeezed. As standard, a quick squeeze launches the camera and a long one fires-up the Google digital assistant.

However, Edge Sense can be customized too. It can zoom in Google Maps or Google Photos, snooze alarms, or answer calls. These are sensibly disabled as standard because HTC doesn’t want you to accidentally fire off these features and start thinking your phone is haunted.

You can even create your own macros by going into an app and “recording” commands. We doubt whether many HTC U11 Life buyers will put the effort in, but HTC is clearly trying hard to squeeze the most out of Edge Sense.

HTC introduced Edge Sense with the U11: it’s not an old feature.

One omission may kill the appeal of the HTC U11 Life for some of you, though. It doesn’t have a headphone jack, just a USB-C port. A reasonable pair of USB-C earphones is included, but there’s no 3.5mm adaptor.

Screen

• 5.2-inch Full HD LCD screen
• Good image quality

The HTC U11 Life has a smaller, lower-resolution screen than the U11. However, it’s a punchy display that, in most conditions, doesn’t look much worse than any phone out there.

It’s a 5.2-inch 1080 x 1920 Super LCD. There’s not too much brightness loss at an angle, and color is well-saturated without looking overdone. The image also appears very close to the top surface, a sign of an advanced super-thin screen architecture.

You have to take the HTC U11 Life into a more extreme environment to see its limits. We’re not talking Bear Grylls fodder, just that you’ll see very slightly raised blacks in a darkened room, and the brightness is bright but not quite the 1000 nits of the brightest. That said, we took the phone out on a fairly bright day and the screen was still clearly visible.

HTC’s website claims there’s a feature that lets you customize the display color profile, but it’s not in the software of our model.

Battery life

• Mediocre stamina in this class
• 2,600mAh cell
• USB-C Charging

The HTC U11 Life has a 2,600mAh battery, smaller than those of the Moto G5S Plus, the Honor 9 or the Moto X4.

Thanks to the energy improvements of the Snapdragon 630 chipset, stamina is just about acceptable. However, on busier phone days when we’ve streamed a few hours of podcasts over 4G, the HTC U11 Life needed a top up hours before bed time.

If you want a phone that lasts through a day (almost) no matter what you subject it to, the HTC U11 Life isn’t the best choice.

Results in our usual battery benchmark were poor too. A 90-minute video played at maximum brightness takes 35% off the battery level. The Moto X4 lost just 10%.

Camera

• Excellent HDR processing
• Fine detail often looks soft close-up
• Poor low light image quality

The HTC U11 Life is one of the best arguments for computational photography you’ll find. In certain conditions the results it can pull out of what appears to be a somewhat unremarkable sensor are, well, remarkable.

Its dynamic range optimization is at times staggeringly good, with shadow detail when shooting right into the sun similar to what you might see in shots taken with an APS-C camera. For the non photography nerds out there, this is kind of sensor used by compact system and DSLR cameras that cost up to $1000/£1000.

This is down to a merging of several exposures with just about every shot you take. For sunset photos and nature shots where the sun is peeking out behind a tree, this is a fantastic benefit. Dynamic range is often comparable with that of the best phone cameras available right now. It’s Instagram-tastic.

Look a little closer and you can see some of the limitations of the hardware, though. The HTC U11 Life has a 16MP sensor, and while HTC hasn’t announced the exact sensor used, it’s almost certainly one with smaller sensor pixels.

Up close, fine details have much less integrity than those of the best 12MP sensors. At pixel level images look simultaneously soft and a little noisy, even in daylight.

So while the resolution is high, lower-res cameras can actually reproduce much better, cleaner detail. Like other cameras struggling against the limits of the hardware, the HTC U11 Life tends to struggle with very vivid red tones as well.

Night photo quality is also poor. There’s no optical image stabilization to allow slower exposures, and consequently fine detail disappears completely. This is a great camera for tricky daylight conditions (as long as you don’t zoom in), but a poor one at night.

The HTC U11 Life also lacks a background blur portrait mode, which is usually, but not always, restricted to phones with dual rear cameras. You do get a Pro mode, which saves DNG (RAW) files instead of JPGs, but such a mode shines with a camera with a more versatile sensor and stabilized lens.

On the front, the 8MP selfie camera is nothing special either. Again, fine detail looks soft.

Video capture goes up to 4K resolution for the rear camera, though, and there’s a 120fps slow motion mode.

Interface and reliability

• Android 8.0 in a mostly pure form
• Likely to receive prompt updates
• HTC’s alterations are minimal and subtle

The HTC U11 Life runs Android 8.0 and is one of the first phones to be part of the Android One program. This means it uses the standard Android interface rather than HTC Sense, the custom look seen in the original HTC U11 and most other HTC phones.

Or at least, it does in most of the world. However, US buyers will get the usual HTC overlay.

Android One is no bad thing. Google’s interface is clean, attractive and intuitive. For example, you simply flick up anywhere on the home screen to bring up the vertical apps menu. It responds to the speed of the gesture too, giving it a more fluid feel than most rival interfaces.

There are still the familiar Android soft keys too. Little light-up Back and Recent Apps icons appear to each side of the fingerprint scanner whenever the HTC U11 Life is in use.

If you’ve not used Android 8.0 yet, you’ll also notice the little dots by some of the icons. This means there are notifications pending for that app, and you can see them by long-pressing the icon, as well as dragging down the notification bar.

Movies, music and gaming

• Great gaming performance
• No headphone jack
• Rivals have better speakers

There are no extra apps to get on your nerves in the HTC U11 Life. Even extra features like Edge Sense are built into the Settings menu rather than cluttering up your apps menu.

This leaves you with Play Music for tunes and Play Movies for video. These are great apps that let you play your own files as well as streaming or purchasing titles from Google’s library. Naturally, Google would rather you do the latter and this plays out in their layouts.

It’s the hardware side that comes to define, and limit, the HTC U11 Life’s media cred. First, there’s no headphone jack. This means you (probably) can’t plug-in your favorite headphones without an adaptor and can’t charge the battery and use headphones at the same time. Again, unless you have a special adaptor.

The earphones that come in the box are on-par with a decent budget pair of in-ears, and will do the job if you’re not too picky about sound quality. They can also be custom-tuned to your hearing and have noise cancellation. Both of these use a mic inside the earphones.

This tuning makes the sound more lively but also a bit more aggressive, highlighting the lack of finesse of the drivers. The noise cancelling is nowhere near as effective as almost any pair of active noise cancellation earphones either.

Testing them out on the road, they do appear to reduce the rustle of cable noise a little, but do not significantly reduce traffic noise.

Don’t get too excited about the bundled earphones.

The HTC U11 Life’s speaker isn’t best-in-class either. Max volume is lower than that of the Moto G5S Plus or Honor 9, and there’s a little less power to the lower frequencies.

It’s still a useful little speaker, though, with sound quality good enough for podcasts and the odd emergency music duty. It sits on the bottom edge, so there’s no stereo effect when you play a game.

General gaming performance is very good, particularly given the HTC U11 Life uses a mid-range CPU. Frame rates in high-end games like Real Racing 3, Asphalt 8 and Dead Trigger 2 are all very smooth, closer to the performance we expect from a true top-end phone.

Performance and benchmarks

• Mid-range CPU does a great job
• Snapdragon 630 CPU
• Newly-upgraded graphics chipset

The HTC U11 Life has a Snapdragon 630 chipset. In Geekbench 4, its scores are very similar to those of its predecessor, the Snapdragon 625, with 4,125 points in this case. However, there are some notable improvements.

First, and this explains the great gaming performance, Qualcomm has significantly improved the graphics chipset. The Adreno 508 is clocked at 850MHz, up from 650MHz in the Snapdragon 625.

It also has a faster 4G modem, and approaches its processor cores differently. Like the other 6-series Snapdragon CPUs, all the cores are Cortex-A53s (a classic “budget” core), but Qualcomm has moved to using four lower-clocked ones and four faster performance ones. Rather than eight at the same speed.

The aim is to improve battery life without compromising performance.

Verdict

The HTC U11 Life is a great phone in many respects. Screen, software, and day-to-day performance are all grumble-free, and while the squeezable sides may not be a revelation they are almost radically customizable. And therefore about as useful as is currently imaginable.

Battery life is just okay, and, like quite a lot of mid-range phones, the camera is not great at night. However, the HTC U11 Life is enjoyable to use and represents good, if not truly disruptive, value.

As the price of top-end phones spirals around, and above, $1000/£1000, our appreciation for phones at prices normal people can stomach only grows.

Who's this for?

The HTC U11 Life is for those who want a phone with a touch of design glamour without the cost of a top-end model.

It’s also a good choice for people tired of custom Android interfaces, because (outside the US) Android One provides Google’s software as its engineers intended, with HTC’s extras laid on top like a pretty belt, braces and bangles that can be removed if you like.

Should you buy it?

The HTC U11 Life’s biggest problem, if you don’t mind the missing headphone jack, is competition. There are a lot of great alternatives, many of which have metal or glass frames for a more expensive feel. The Moto X4, Moto G5S Plus, Honor 9 are the obvious alternatives.

Does it matter? That’s up to you. The Moto X4 and Honor 9 also have more consistent, more versatile cameras, although neither has quite the HDR chops of the HTC U11 Life.

With better build and battery life, we’re leaning slightly towards the Moto and Honor options. However, as all three are good value phones most will enjoy, you’ll have to decide whether the intrigue of the HTC U11 Life’s squeezy sides is enough to tilt you the other way.

First reviewed: November 2017

If you've already been able to dip into Android's Oreo, there's a good chance you're using one of Google's flagship Pixel phones. 

It's been a lot rougher, though, for anyone else who uses a device from the huge library of Android-powered phones, but you're in luck if you're an owner of the unlocked version of the HTC U11. As of today, you're free to download the highly anticipated OS in the US.

Mo Versi, the company’s VP of product management, recently announced the news in a tweet. He didn't give specific details as to when U11 users with carrier-locked phones would be able to download Oreo, but he added that HTC is working with Sprint to "get it out as quickly as possible." 

For that matter, Versi added that support for Oreo would also be coming to the HTC 10 and the HTC U Ultra "soon."

The goods under the hood

Oreo technically isn't a huge update, but it does include some cool upgrades that could have a significant impact on the core Android experience. 

There's a picture-in-picture mode for videos, for instance, a new notification system that displays dots on app icons and the highly anticipated Project Treble, which makes it easier to download new versions of Android.

It's worth noting, though, that having Oreo alone isn't enough to guarantee support for Project Treble, as OnePlus users discovered last week. Considering that Treble support is only required for devices that support Oreo out of the box, it seems likely that the HTC U11 may not support it as well. We've reached out to HTC for a comment and will update this article if we receive one.

• These are the best phones of the year

Update: This review has been updated to include the addition of the Sense Companion - read on to find out how we found it.

Huge phone screens are becoming the norm, and HTC wants to try its hand at making a phone that’s larger than its traditional flagship – that’s how we’ve got the U Ultra.

The 5.9-inch HTC One Max from 2013 showed it was possible to make a phone that was too big, but this is a phone that’s much easier to handle thanks to a slightly smaller display.

The U Ultra is one half of a new partnership of phones – the other is the HTC U Play – which aren’t exactly flagship products but still pack some impressive spec, and may tempt you to upgrade even before the HTC 11 launches.

But in a market full of great large screen offerings from Samsung, Apple and other Android manufacturers, does the HTC U Ultra do enough differently to stand out from the rest of the crowd?

HTC U Ultra price and release date

HTC has priced the U Ultra at the top end of the market, at a whopping $749 (£649/AU$1,199). That’s quite a step up from the HTC 10, which at the time of the U Ultra's launch was going for $599 (£500, AU$1,099), and currently retails for £470 / $400 / AU$1099, or less when there's a sale on.

It puts the HTC U Ultra in a similar price bracket to the iPhone 7 Plus, which is the most expensive of Apple’s line of phones. 

The U Ultra came to the UK on March 1, and you can buy it directly from HTC. In the US it began shipping in mid-March, while Australia saw a release on March 8.

Since release, the price of the HTC U Ultra has dropped a little, and it can now be found for around £549 in the UK SIM-free - and has seen even heavier reductions around Black Friday, going for as little as £300 from some retailers.

Key features

• HTC's U Ultra features two screens, one along the top of the phone
• It offers extra functionality, including music controls and notifications
• HTC’s ‘Sense Companion’ has now landed on the device

The headline feature of the U Ultra is its dual-screen design. On top of large QHD 5.7-inch display you’ll mainly use to interact with the phone is a 2.05-inch screen sitting alongside the front-facing camera.

This smaller display has a resolution of 160 x 1040, and displays a series of apps in a similar fashion to the second screen on the LG V20. It’s also reminiscent of the way you interact with the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and its ‘Edge’ features.

The smaller display is a useful way to see information displayed without interrupting what you’re doing on the main screen.

For example, if you’re typing out a long email on the main screen you’ll see your Facebook Messenger notifications appear in the second screen, rather than having to come out of your email program to check them.

That’s useful as a reminder, and for a brief glimpse of what’s happening, but it won’t show you everything you need, especially if you receive a long message or complicated notification.

The secondary display itself runs a series of different interfaces. There are options for weather, music, contacts and calendar notifications, and you can also set it up to display shortcuts to some of your most-used apps.

We found the most useful option was a note app, as it meant our reminders were waiting at the top of the screen to jog our memory whenever we opened the phone. Spotify integration, meanwhile, makes the music app useful if you often want to flick through tracks.

You can scroll through all these mini-screens by flicking left and right on the screen itself.

Since launch, HTC has added its ‘Sense Companion’ software to the U Ultra, promising to suggest useful information based on your daily usage.

The Sense Companion can monitor your weight, activity, usage patterns and more, with the user having a fine degree of control over how much it can actually ‘see’.

Going the whole hog and giving all of your info can involve reminders to take an umbrella if it is due to rain, information about nearby restaurants if you’re out at lunch, reminders to charge your phone in the evening and more.

Crucially, the Sense Companion never ‘speaks’ to you, instead - like the rest of HTC’s software - it attempts to fill a gap not taken by Google, giving reminders in writing.

In day to day use, the notifications proved to be only somewhat useful (though this is true of all digital assistants), often missing the mark entirely. They display in the same way as the Facebook Messenger ‘chat heads’, a small bubble taking up a part of the screen.

HTC U Ultra users also have the option of displaying the notifications from the Sense Companion on the small secondary screen - that is if they choose to keep it enabled.

By far the best tie in is with HTC’s Boost+ app, the Sense Companion will monitor your RAM and battery usage and offer to clean up unused caches and stop power-hungry apps on the fly. But this isn’t something that happens all the time, and this inconsistency can be a problem.

In theory, this could be a very powerful tool. Boost+ has an array of granular options over how apps in the foreground and apps in the background can perform, even allowing app by app control. In theory, using this regularly could see battery life increase considerably, though it will depend massively on individual usage.

Still, for everyone who has ever had a mysterious Android program such as ‘Media Browser’ eat up an unconscionable amount of battery, it could be a life-saver.

As HTC continues to update the Sense Companion, and as it learns more about the user, in time it will likely prove to be a useful value-add-on. The real issue is with relevance - every manufacturer in the game seems to be working on its own digital assistant.

Microsoft has Cortana, Google the Google Assistant, Amazon proudly touts Alexa and Samsung flaunts Bixby. All of these companies have more resources and have bigger visions. Whether the Sense Companion will last another year is yet to be seen as HTC insists again that it doesn’t wish to compete directly where Google provides a service better.

For the moment, it is not so annoying that it should be immediately dismissed, and that is an achievement in itself.

Design and display

• Interesting glass-backed design that you'll love or hate
• 5.7-inch QHD main display, which may be too large for some

The HTC U Ultra features a brave design choice you won’t see on any other manufacturer’s phone on the market in 2017. It’s the first phone from the company to embrace a glass back design – and it may not be to everyone’s taste.

HTC calls it a ‘liquid surface’ design, which combines glass and metal, and it isn’t unattractive. It can appear both as a single block color and pearlescent, depending on how the light plays off it, and it looks pretty stunning from afar – especially the sapphire blue variant.

The back of the phone is subtly curved and feels nice to hold in the palm, allowing for a better grip than you might expect when you first set eyes on it. The U Ultra is wider than the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge or other phablets though, so those with smaller hands may have some issues with holding it.

Considering there’s a 5.7-inch screen on this phone, though, it’s quite easy to hold. The glass doesn’t feel slippery, like it can on some handsets, and you won’t find yourself losing your grip easily.

Our main complaint with the design is the weight of the phone – if you’re used to a heavier device, you’ll likely notice how the lack of heft detracts from that premium feel the phone is looking for, though this does make it easier to use one-handed. 

We found all of the buttons easy to reach, including the fingerprint sensor which, as on other HTC devices, is on the front of the phone below the display.

The sensor is a little small compared to some others, and it can sometimes be tricky to get your thumb or finger on exactly the right spot to unlock your phone. We often found ourselves pressing down multiple times to be able to open the U Ultra up.

Either side of the fingerprint sensor are capacitive keys for ‘back’ and a list view of the apps you currently have running.

You’ll be able to buy the HTC U Ultra in black, white, blue and pink – although that last version is called Cosmetic Pink in the marketing materials. Come on HTC: women don’t need to be told which phone is designed for them. We know pink phones sell well, so just call it that and don’t make the gender targeting so overt…

The U Ultra features a Super LCD5 5.7-inch display with a QHD resolution – that’s 2560 x 1440 – so you get gorgeous picture quality no matter what you’re looking at. It’s larger than the display on the HTC 10, and at 513 pixels per inch it’s slightly less pixel-dense than the screen on HTC’s last flagship, but offers the same crystal-clear picture.

The brightness is also great on the U Ultra, remaining plenty visible in direct sunlight, while viewing angles are exactly as good as you’d expect from a phone made in 2017.

Interface and reliability

• Android 7 software packed in with Sense UI laying over the top

HTC has packed Android 7 Nougat into the U Ultra, with its own Sense UI over the top to give it a unique flavor, and though the phone hasn’t since been updated to Android Oreo, security updates have remained regular.

Sense UI has a simple interface that makes everything easy to find, although it will feel slightly different if you were using a stock Android phone before.

A lot of the features here are Android 7’s, with a few of HTC’s bells and whistles added, which means you can use all the benefits of HTC’s UI without having to put up with a lack of customization, as you would on devices that run stock software.

One of the UI options Sense enables is news on your home screen. It uses a service called News Republic, which will source stories to your taste for you to see when you unlock your phone.

HTC’s Blinkfeed is also here to give you a full rundown of your day, with social media and news updates available via a flick of your finger.

When you’re on the home screen you can scroll left and see the highlights of all the services you’ve connected to Blinkfeed – you can see popular Facebook posts, tweets or even news stories, again courtesy of News Republic. Sadly, it is impossible to receive news from other sources, which may not sit well with some.

If you want a quick distraction and can’t decided which social media channel to use, Blinkfeed can be a useful little tool.

Movies, music and gaming

• No 3.5mm headphone jack may be a problem for some
• Limited speaker tech, unlike other HTC phones
• Nice big display for playing games and watching video

Media playback is likely to be a sticking point for some people who would otherwise be interested in the HTC U Ultra. As on the iPhone 7, Moto Z and some other phones there’s no traditional headphone port on the U Ultra, so your regular wired headphones won’t work with this phone.

You’ll instead have to opt for a Bluetooth headset or use HTC earbuds, which are included in the box. These connect to the USB-C port at the bottom of the phone, meaning you won’t be able to charge your phone and listen to music at the same time.

This will be a major issue for some, although when we connected our wireless headphones to the U Ultra it offered a solid connection which never dropped out.

HTC is renowned for its quality front-facing speakers, but, like the headphone port, these are missing from the U Ultra.

There’s no patented BoomSound technology as on the HTC 10. Instead there’s just one sound driver, meaning you lose a lot of the ‘oomph’ when listening to audio out loud.

If you’re looking for a phone that can just play the odd song, the U Ultra will suit you well as most phones on the market, but it’s disappointing considering HTC’s superior audio capabilities in previous phones, and we can’t see why it would omit decent speakers on a high-end phone. As with every bottom-firing speaker, the sound is very easy to muffle as well.

We found watching video on the U Ultra to be a very enjoyable experience, thanks mostly to the high-resolution and super-bright display creating a beautiful picture.

HTC doesn’t include its own video app, but if you want to play files directly from the phone’s storage you can launch a simple video player, while you’ve got Google Play Movies or YouTube for online content, and you can also download apps such as Netflix to enjoy movies on the go. 

Storage-wise you should be safe with the U Ultra, as it comes in 64GB and 128GB options. We had the 64GB for the purpose of this review, and even with HTC’s software onboard you’ve still got 53GB to fill up with media and apps.

If you’re a gamer the HTC U Ultra will suit your tastes whether you want to test out the odd puzzler or play the latest and greatest mobile titles.

We played a variety of games, and found everything to run smoothly. The likes of Pokemon Go did take a little while to load at some stages, but once it was up and running everything worked well.

Benchmarks and performance

• Snapdragon 821 processor and 4GB of RAM packed inside
• Not phenomenal benchmarking scores though

Under the hood of the HTC U Ultra is a top-of-the-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor – although it won’t be top-of-the-range for long, as the Samsung Galaxy S8 and HTC 11 are due to launch shortly after the U Ultra, and both are rumored to have newer Snapdragon 825 processors on board.

This setup is still impressive though, especially as it’s back up by 4GB of RAM. That’s more than enough RAM to get you by, and when we were scooting around apps we found the U Ultra to be reliable, and able to keep up with everything we wanted to do.

Running the phone through benchmarking software, we found it returned an average score of 3851. That’s OK for a mid-range phone, but it’s not really strong enough considering the price of the U Ultra.

For example, the HTC 10, a phone with an older processor setup onboard, scored 4962 – and even that was a score we were disappointed with at the time, as the Galaxy S7 had just managed 6542 on the same test.

If you’re looking for decent power in your device you’ll want to go for either 2016's HTC 10 or any other flagship phone from 2017, such as the HTC U11, as you’ll get more impressive performance than you will from the U Ultra.

One thing that is noticeable, is that the U Ultra has a tendency to run hot, which may have implications for its longevity a few years down the line, but this may simply have been an issue with the review unit.

Battery life

• Average battery life that should last you a full day
• 3,000mAh cell powering a top of the range processor and high res display

When you buy a new phone these days you expect a device that can last a full day without having to be put on charge – and the good news is that we found the U Ultra just about manages this. That said, it sometimes won’t last as long as you’d hope for.

There’s a 3,000mAh battery here powering the large QHD screen and high-end processor. We regularly found the phone would die off towards the end of the day, around 10pm or so.

Considering the U Ultra is powering a 5.7-inch QHD display, it’s a bit disappointing that HTC didn’t opt for a larger cell.

The standard TechRadar battery test – playing a 90-minute video clip from the phone’s memory on full brightness, with connectivity options on – left the battery at 79% capacity.

That’s a similar result to the HTC 10, which dropped 22% of its battery life in the same test; it’s a slight improvement, but nothing to write home about.

Turning the secondary screen off, or customizing how it displays (i.e. only working when the main display is on) can improve battery life considerably. Leaving the secondary display on tends to reduce battery life by around 10% in most instances.

The U Ultra supports fast-charging if you need a quick top-up. Disappointingly, though, there’s no wireless charging, and it’s not clear why HTC isn’t embracing the feature on this phone.

It was assumed the HTC 10 didn’t include wireless charging because of its all-metal design, but we would have thought the inclusion of glass in the design here would give HTC the opportunity to include tech that a lot of people are now expecting to see in their high-end phones.

Camera

• 12MP rear camera, which we saw on the HTC 10
• Zoe camera mode tries to recreate Live Photos option from the iPhone range
• Super high level 16MP front-facing camera

You’d expect a kick-ass camera to be a highlight of a phone as pricey as the HTC U Ultra, but not only does the camera here not kick ass, in truth it’s a little disappointing.

On paper a 12MP sensor doesn’t sound thrilling, and it’s remarkably similar to the HTC 10’s camera, which we didn’t exactly fall in love with.

The f/1.8 aperture is pretty fast, although despite this we found that images taken in auto mode tended to turn out a little darker than we’d hoped for.

And when we pixel-peeked at images we’ve taken the focus seemed to be a little off. You can tap the screen to focus, which we recommend doing as the autofocus wasn’t fantastic.

Photos from the U Ultra don’t stand up against those from the likes of the iPhone 7 or Galaxy S7 Edge, but this will still suit you if you’re looking to take the odd shot to share on social media.

Generally, detail is well represented and colors are quite accurate, if you can get this device at a lower price point the snapper is better than much of the competition.

And a big bonus of the U Ultra’s camera is the interface, which we found simple to use. The shutter button on the right-hand side of the screen is easy to hit, while if you swipe in from the left you’ll find a series of other shooting modes.

That includes Zoe camera. This is a mode that captures three seconds of video around your photo, and works in a similar way to Live Photos on the latest iPhone models, enabling you to create short interactive video clips.

Unlike on Apple devices though, you have to choose a separate mode to take Zoe pictures, and this makes it rather redundant – if you want to capture video you can just use the video shooting mode, so it doesn’t really add much.

It’s also quite impractical to share these clips on social media, so you’ll just end up viewing Zoe camera images on the phone.

There’s also a panorama mode, for when you want to stitch a few frames together to capture a sweeping landscape or city skyline.

You may also want to explore the pro mode if you’re a fan of phone photography. Here you can play with the white balance, ISO, focus and more to get the best possible images out of the U Ultra’s camera.

The front-facing selfie shooter on the U Ultra is a big upgrade over the HTC 10. The sensor is 16MP – even bigger than the U Ultra’s rear shooter – and offers video recording at Full HD as well as an auto HDR mode.

If you want a good front-facing camera shot, the U Ultra will deliver. We found selfies to be lively and vibrant compared to those from other cameras we’ve used.

However, in a market that has the Galaxy S7 Edge and iPhone 7 Plus it’s the rear camera that really needs to impress, and it’s a shame HTC hasn’t made a bigger effort to improve it for the U Ultra.

Camera samples

The HTC U Ultra is a phone that doesn’t really know where it sits in the market, and it’s hard to fathom who it was built for. It takes a lot of what made the HTC 10 a great device and sprinkles on a little extra, but the design is very different, and it all comes at a higher price.

The lack of powerful speakers and an overtly premium design don’t help the U Ultra to shine, though, and it’s a little disappointing that HTC hasn’t just super-sized the metal HTC 10 with a larger display. 

Who’s this for?

The U Ultra is built for those who like the HTC look and ethos, but who want a larger device than the HTC 10.

Most of what made the HTC 10 one of the best Android devices on the market is on display here, packaged with a larger screen and a few extra added features.

The secondary display on its own isn’t a reason to buy this phone, but it’s a nice little addition – and it makes some of the irritating elements of jumping around on an Android phone that little bit easier to handle.

The screen on the HTC U Ultra is also another big plus. The large QHD display is a thing of beauty, and if you’re going to be regularly gaming or watching video, this is a great phone for doing both.

The Sense Companion though is a solution in search of a problem, while it might be useful for some, it often feels like just another distraction.

Should you buy it?

If you’re looking for the best battery life on the market, go for the slightly smaller Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. The battery life isn’t atrocious on the U Ultra, but we’ve certainly seen better, and that’s a disappointment in the latest from HTC.

We’d also recommend taking a good look at the design of the U Ultra before you splash out. It can look great from afar, but this certainly isn’t a design that will appeal to everybody, especially those who are used to phones with full-metal unibody designs.

If you want a big phone and you’re a fan of HTC’s design ethos, the U Ultra may well be the handset for you. Just bear in mind that you won’t be getting that much more than the HTC 10 offers, while paying a good deal more.

First reviewed: February 2017

Competition

Not a fan of the HTC U Ultra? Here are the phones you may want to consider instead.

HTC 10

Last year’s flagship HTC phone continues to feature in our roundups of the best phones money can buy. It has a stylish all-metal uni-body design, a beautiful QHD display and amazing audio capabilities.

It also features an improved battery, but it’s only running Android 6 Marshmallow software at the moment, and doesn’t have the dual screen you get on the HTC U Ultra. However, considering that the HTC 10 costs quite a bit less than the U Ultra it’s hard to recommend the U Ultra over it if you’re looking for a great-value HTC device.

Read our full HTC 10 review

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge

At the time of writing the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is ranked our number one phone in the world – and it’s clear that with the U Ultra, HTC is trying to achieve a lot of what Samsung has done fantastically well with this device.

While you don’t get the U Ultra’s secondary display you do get a lovely curved display here, along with phenomenal picture quality that arguably makes this the better pick.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge review 

Huawei Mate 9

Looking for a phone with a large display that doesn’t cost as much as the U Ultra? Huawei’s latest phablet may be the best option for you. It features a 5.9-inch Full HD display and the latest Kirin 955 SoC (system-on-a-chip) inside, as well as a 20MP rear camera.

The spec isn’t as impressive on Huawei’s latest phablet, but it’s quite a bit cheaper than the U Ultra at $599.99 (£579, AU$999).

Read our full Huawei Mate 9 review

Update: This review has been updated to include the addition of the Sense Companion - read on to see how we found it.

The HTC U Play is, the Taiwanese firm claims, “for the playful U”. It’s an attempt to give the phone an identity, but it hasn’t really worked. The U Play is a good phone – there’s a pleasing display, premium design and decent cameras – but it’s suffering an identity crisis.

It sits below the flagship HTC 10 and its bigger brother, the HTC U Ultra, and neither of the new U handsets will supersede the firm’s next flagship phone, the HTC 11 (although it won’t be called that), which is due to launch in the next month or so.

There’s a solid spec sheet, yet the price doesn’t help differentiate it from the swelling ranks of mid-to-high-tier handsets, and it means the HTC U Play risks slipping quietly into the background.

There’s style and there's substance – it just feels like we’re missing that je ne sais quoi.

 HTC U Play release date and price

• HTC U Play price: £399 SIM-free (around AU$650)
• HTC U Play release date: March 1 in UK, March 8 in AU

The HTC U Play release date is slated for March 1 in the UK and March 8 in Australia, but interestingly HTC has no plans to bring the handset to the US. It is, however, introducing the U Ultra stateside – a phone which has more going for it, and which benefits for a couple of defining features the U Play lacks. 

The HTC U Play price is £399 (around AU$650) SIM-free in the UK, while pricing for Australia has yet to be confirmed. Since release the price of the device has dropped significantly, to around £250 in most cases, a definite bargain.

That puts the U Play in the same league as the OnePlus 3T, Moto Z Play, Sony Xperia X Compact and Honor 8 in terms of costs – which is some stiff competition for it to contend with.

It’s all about U

• HTC Sense Companion not ready yet, ‘coming soon’
• No headphone jack, but bundled ear-analyzing buds

The focus here is firmly about personalisation. The U Play is a phone which HTC says will listen to you, learn from you and “capture the best of you“.

HTC, like seemingly every other company in 2017, has opted to include a ‘smart assistant’ with its device - the “Sense Companion”. This promises to learn from your daily inputs and the information you provide to give useful suggestions at key moments, at least in theory.

Unlike Cortana, Alexa and the like however, this assistant doesn’t bark orders, instead it is more about the gentle notifications. These appear as blue bars in the notification shade, or as Facebook Messenger style ‘chat-heads’, both of which are readily dismissable.

The reminders generated tend to be generic. If it’s due to rain, it’ll remind you to take an umbrella. Used a lot of battery during your workday? The Sense Companion will remind you to charge the U Play before heading out for the evening. Did you enter your height and weight? It will track your steps and measure your continuing fitness.

Whether any of this is useful will depend enormously on how you use your phone, and how much information you want to surrender.

A potentially useful feature however is the integration with Boost+, the HTC battery and RAM manager built in. The Sense Companion will regularly monitor your usage, and see if any particular rogue apps are using up a little too much juice in the background before shutting them down if things degenerate further.

That is, if the Companion works in this way at all - during the review period these notifications were only sporadic at best.

As you use the device, and as the Companion collects more information, this may of course change, machine-learning being contingent on having access to mountains of information.

However, with the likes of Google Assistant and Alexa providing a similar service, but better, it begs the question of why the Sense Companion exists at all. Regardless, it is a bit of flavour for the phone, and will likely be enjoyed by those who choose to use it, it is certainly less obtrusive than other, similar programs.

The HTC U Play does come with HTC USonic, a clever analyzer that uses the bundled HTC USonic earbuds to engineer the audio output specifically to your ears using a sonic pulse.

Plug the USonic earbuds in and you’ll notice one of the shortcomings of the HTC U Play… no headphone jack. Instead they plug into the USB-C port on the base of the phone, which is okay until you hit the problem of wanting to charge the handset while continuing to use the headphones. You simply can’t. 

You either have to switch to a Bluetooth set (but who wants to carry around two sets of headphones?) or stop listening to music. You can, of course, opt to use the internal speaker – but that’s not really feasible when you’re in the office or on public transport.

The first time you plug the earbuds in the U Play will recognize that they're USonic buds and launch the setup wizard so you can analyze your ears. It’s a simple, quick process that just takes a few seconds. 

When the results are in you can toggle the effect on and off so that you can hear the difference – although while there is a difference it doesn’t feel especially dramatic. 

Audio playback is enhanced, but it’s not clear whether that’s because the phone really has accurately mapped the inside of our ears, or whether it’s just using the BoomSound-style enhancements we’ve enjoyed on previous HTC phones. 

A notification appears at the top of the screen when USonic is enabled, and you can tap this notification in the pull-down panel to “readjust to your environment”.

So if, for example, you move from a noisy place to a quieter location (or vice versa) give this a quick tap and USonic will tweak the playback levels to give you optimum quality by detecting the sound environment around you.

Design and display

• Premium metal and glass design
• Lightweight and easy to use one-handed
• 5.2-inch, full HD Super LCD 2 display

The HTC U Play sports a classic smartphone look, with a glass front, metal frame and a slightly more unique pearlescent ‘Liquid Surface’ glass rear. 

Front-on, the U Play looks similar to the latest iPhone and Galaxy handsets – although that’s no bad thing, and unlike Samsung, HTC has removed its branding from the display side for a cleaner, minimalist finish. 

The textured power/lock key and volume rocker are easy to locate on the right side of the phone, while your 2-in-1 nanoSIM and microSD tray resides on the top of the U Play.  

The 5.2-inch display means dimensions are kept to a relatively compact 146 x 72.9 x 8mm, making the HTC U Play easy to hold and operate one-handed. At 145g it’s also surprisingly lightweight, which is nice during extendingBut n gaming sessions or movie playback.

However it also means the U Play feels a little cheaper than it is, while the Liquid Surface rear proves to be rather divisive. It’s available in four base colors: white, blue, pink and black, but twist the phone in the light and you’ll be treated to a variety of hues.

We had the white HTC U Play for review, and grew fond of the way it played with the light, but others we showed it to were less impressed with the finish.

What everyone can agree on though is a lack of grip. While we were able to firmly grasp the U Play with one hand, the brushed metal sides and smooth glass rear meant there was little for the palm to play with; if you’re accident-prone you’ll want to stick a cover on your U Play before venturing outdoors. 

Back to the front and you’ll find a fingerprint scanner that doubles as the home button below the screen. Digit recognition is fast and accurate, and it’s flanked by touch-sensitive multi-tasking and back keys, which remain hidden until you wake the screen and their backlights trigger.

Turning our attention to the screen, the 5.2-inch Super LCD panel boasts a full HD (1080 x 1920) resolution, providing bright, colorful and detailed imagery.

There’s not a lot more to say on this subject – it’s a spec we’ve come to expect at this price point, and the U Play’s screen doesn’t disappoint.

Interface and reliability

• Android 6 isn’t the latest version
• HTC’s Sense overlay is easy to use
• Five gestures available for quick access to features

The HTC U Play arrives running Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and as of November 2017 that's still the software it's running. That’s rather frustrating, considering Android 7.0 Nougat launched back in October 2016 and even Android Oreo has now launched.

It’s all the more annoying if you glance over to the HTC U Ultra, which launched at the same time as the U Play, and see that it comes with Android 7 out of the box. An all-round bizarre situation then, and it makes the U Play seem like a second-class citizen on its home turf.

While you may not have the latest software, what you do find on-screen is pleasing. HTC’s Sense interface overlays the Android operating system, providing a relatively clean and fuss-free experience.

HTC retains the app drawer on the U Play, a feature other manufacturers have started to remove, but has added its Blinkfeed Highlights panel – accessible with a swipe from left to right on your home screen. 

It pulls what it thinks are important updates from key apps such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and your calendar, and presents them in a series of cards. I found the U Play wasn’t particularly great at pulling in the things I really cared about, though, so I removed it completely.

The HTC U Play does come with a selection of gestures, accessible from the settings menu. These include things like double-tapping the screen to wake, and swiping down twice on the display when it’s off to launch the camera. 

We found double-tap to wake useful, but we didn’t have any pressing need for the other options on offer. 

Overall the HTC U Play has a familiar Android interface that's easy to navigate, ensuring that anyone transitioning from another Android handset won’t have any issues getting to grips with their new phone.

Movies, music and gaming

• Poor internal speaker quality
• Good screen for movies and gaming
• No headphone jack or adapter in box

We’ve already talked about the USense earbuds that come bundled with the HTC U Play, but the phone arrives light on multimedia applications.

That does make it much easier to decide which app to use though, as you’ve got just one choice: HTC has opted to use Google’s suite of apps, which include Play Music and Play Movies & TV.  

The former gives you standard music playback for any tracks you download onto the U Play, but Google also offers its own subscription streaming service through the app, if you’d rather have instant access to millions of songs without actually owning any. 

You can always install third-party alternatives such as Spotify or Tidal if you’re already allied with those services, though, so you’re not totally tied to Google’s way of playing music. 

Audio quality via the wired, USB-C-connected bundled earbuds is very good, with rich bass and resonating mid-tones providing a pleasing listening experience.  

However it’s not all good news. The lack of a headphone jack will irk some audiophiles, and the fact that HTC doesn’t even provide a 3.5mm adaptor in the box further frustrates.

Indeed, the 3.5mm adaptor sold by HTC will only work with HTC devices (and vice versa), further limiting options available.

Audio quality from the internal speaker also disappoints, especially as this has generally been an area where HTC has excelled in the past. Playback is tinny and distorted, making for uncomfortable listening.

The poor speaker performance carries over to video playback and gaming, and you’ll want to plug in the USense earbuds or invest in a set of Bluetooth headphones to improve your experience on the U Play.

It is comfortable to hold though, with the curved, smooth rear providing a pleasing surface for your palms, while the lightweight design means you won’t have your wrists aching 20 minutes into a blockbuster film.

The 5.2-inch Full HD display provides a crisp, clear and bright viewing experience for both movies and games, although quality isn’t as pin-sharp as you’ll find on the larger, QHD U Ultra.

Specs and performance

• Octa-core processor and 3GB of RAM gives plenty of power
• Not flagship performance, some slow loads

The HTC U Play comes with an octa-core MediaTek Helio P10 chipset and 3GB of RAM under the hood, giving it plenty of power to perform even the most strenuous of mobile tasks. 

Generally the U Play runs smoothly, but there were the odd times where the phone would freeze and re-boot (this happened three times during our 10-day review period), or apps would take a little longer than expected to load. 

The freezing issue should be something HTC can iron out with a software update, but it's a little annoying when it does happen.  

High-profile games load in good time, and we were able to easily play Boom Beach, Clash Royale and Pokemon Go without issue on the HTC U Play. 

Running the Geekbench 4 app on the U Play produced an average multi-core score of 2,821, placing it comfortably below the flagship phones currently available and reiterating the phone’s mid-range status.

That number is significantly lower than the 5,207 clocked by the Honor 8 and the 4,313 by the OnePlus 3T, but it’s on par with the 2,600 scored by the Moto Z Play. The HTC U Play certainly doesn’t put in a bad performance, and it’s still a highly usable phone, but you can get more power for your money.

Battery life

• Disappointing battery which struggles to see out a day
• Regularly needs a mid-afternoon top-up

The HTC U Play packs a 2,500mAh battery into its 8mm-thick body, which is decidedly smaller than most of the competition in its price range – and it shows. 

We found that the HTC U Play continually struggled to see out a full day on a single charge, usually requiring an early evening top-up.  

And with slightly heavier usage, including a couple of hours of simultaneous gaming and Spotify streaming, we found ourselves reaching for the USB-C charger by early afternoon.

Even lighter usage appeared to drain the battery quicker than on rival handsets, and while it is possible to eke out a full day (7am to around 11pm) from a single charge you'll need to resign yourself to not using the U Play very much.

Running the TechRadar battery test, which involves playing a 90-minute Full HD video with screen brightness at max and Wi-Fi on, the U Play lost 30% of its life. That’s a pretty weak showing, with the Honor 8 losing 20%, the OnePlus 3T 14% and the Moto Z Play just 7% in the same test.

In short then, anyone other than a light user will need to carry a charger with them to ensure their HTC U Play can see them through until bedtime. 

There are a couple of power-saving modes to help you extend the battery life, with the standard power saver reducing screen brightness, conserving CPU usage and limiting background activity.

It can help eke a little more time from your handset, but if you’re really desperate you may want to switch to extreme saver, which reduces you to just a few core apps for use in emergencies, basically making your smartphone dumb – it’s a last-resort setting.

Camera

• 16MP front and rear cameras
• Strong performance producing high-quality snaps

While the HTC U Play disappoints in the battery department, it goes some way to making up for that with a strong camera showing. 

HTC has equipped the U Play with 16MP snappers front and back, although the rear-facing camera has a few extra tricks up its sleeve in the shape of auto HDR (high dynamic range), speedy auto focus and OIS (optical image stablization) to improve low-light, back-lit and fast-moving scenes. 

Things have been kept relatively low-key in the camera app, with Panorama and Pro modes accompanying the standard Photo option. Auto HDR is on by default, but this can be toggled by tapping the icon on screen, although for the most part we left it on auto. 

There’s also a Zoe mode, which captures three seconds of HD video with every shot. This isn’t anything new – and HTC has been offering it way before Apple came along with its Live Photos – but the implementation here isn’t as smooth. 

The U Play saves the photo and the three-second clip separately, so unlike with Apple’s implementation, your photos don’t 'come to life' as you scroll through them. 

The responsive sensor enables you to capture shots in rapid succession, and image quality is generally very good, with the U Play able to capture a high level of detail and colour in shots. 

The U Play performs well in low light too, an area where many handsets struggle, with clean shots dealing with the limited light well. 

Moving to the front-facing 16MP camera and the quality is still good, but it’s not quite as good as the rear snapper, with no OIS or HDR to aid your shots. 

For selfies though it’s excellent, and the 'makeup' mode does its best to smooth skin tones while not making you look like an alien, as some beauty modes can. 

There’s a selfie panorama mode too, allowing you to squeeze a number of buddies into your snap by tilting the U Play left and right while it captures the shot. It’s not a feature we envision getting a great deal of usage, but it could be handy at the odd family gathering or group night out.

Verdict

The HTC U Play is a solid Android smartphone. It has enough grunt under the hood, a decent display, strong cameras and smart bundled earbuds – but it’s a package which feels like it’s missing something -  and the Sense Companion certainly isn’t enough to compensate. 

The price still feels a little high, the battery life is disappointing, and the lack of a headphone jack will irk some users – but it’s the general sense of belonging, or rather the lack of it, that has us still scratching our heads over the U Play. 

It sits in a highly competitive bracket of the market in which phones need to do something spectacular to stand out, and the U Play doesn’t have that knockout punch in its locker to make people sit up and take notice.

Who’s it for?

Without that clear place in the market it’s difficult to say exactly who the HTC U Play is for. There are a number of strong alternatives at the same price, with the U Play potentially winning over those looking for a unique, eye-catching design and solid cameras at a non-flagship price point. 

Those wanting to get the most bang for their buck, though, are better off looking at the likes of the OnePlus 5T and Honor 8.

Should I buy it?

If you’re taken by the unique styling of the HTC U Play, and need a solid camera on your smartphone, then this handset won’t let you down.  

You’ll need to carry a charging cable if you’re out for the day, and invest in a set of Bluetooth headphones if you don’t want to use the USB-C earbuds, but in today’s world those are trade-offs some can stomach.

The HTC U Play has plenty of competition, and we’ve picked out three handsets you might want to consider before taking the plunge on this phone.

HTC U Ultra

If you’re looking for more features the U Play’s big brother is what you’ll want. The HTC U Ultra has a larger 5.7-inch display with a higher QHD resolution, but the talking point here is the secondary screen just above this. 

It gives you quick access to a selection of apps such as weather and Spotify, as well as quick settings, contacts and notifications, without interrupting the action on the main screen. 

Elsewhere there’s a 12MP rear camera, 16MP front snapper, a more powerful Snapdragon 821 chipset, 4GB of RAM and either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage. 

All this comes at a cost though, with the U Ultra carrying a flagship price tag even though it’s not HTC’s top device.

• HTC U Ultra review

OnePlus 3T

When it comes to bang-for-your-buck smartphones, few do it better than OnePlus, and the 3T is a shining example of that. 

You get a 5.5-inch Full HD display, Snapdragon 821 chipset, 6GB of RAM, 16MP rear camera, 16MP front camera and a 3,400mAh battery for the same price as the U Play.  

It is a bigger handset, and you’ll need two hands to use it comfortably, but if you're comfortable with the size then the OnePlus 3T is a superior option.

• OnePlus 3T review

Moto Z Play

The Moto Z Play is also designed to play, and arguably does a better job of it than the U Play thanks to its headphone jack, long-lasting battery and cheaper price. 

It's not all good news though, as the Z Play doesn't provide stellar performance and its camera is a little weaker.

There's an ace up the sleeve of the Moto Z Play though, and that's the fact that it works with Motorola's Mods, which means you can clip on add-ons such as JBL speakers, an optical zoom camera and even a projector to transform your phone.

• Moto Z Play review

First reviewed: February 2017

It's the perfect time of year for HTC U11 deals. So if you've been holding out on purchasing a new smartphone until Black Friday and Cyber Monday and an HTC fan, the time to act is now.

The biggest savings amounts to $50 off the HTC U11  from now until November 29 at 12 AM EST. It includes the HTC U11 for $599 ($50 off its original price and the price you'd pay on Amazon)

Even better, you’ll get more than just the phone. HTC is tossing in a set of JBL Reflect Aware C noise-cancelling headphones (a $199 value), as well as the Tile-like HTC Fetch key fob that can help you track down a lost set of keys, for free with purchase.

This cost covers the baseline model that comes stocked with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. However, if you add $80 onto the tag for a total of $679 (usually $729), you can double the storage to 128GB and increase the RAM to 6GB.

No matter how you cut it, the U11 is supremely powerful and designed like no other flagship smartphone from this year. It has made its way onto our list of the very best Android phones, and if you’re a stickler for awesome photography and performance, you’re in for a treat.

HTC deal ecstacy

If you’re low on cash, but still want to reap the benefits of HTC’s holiday price slashing, the HTC Bolt or HTC U11 Life might be more up your alley. Both phones start under $400 ($200 for the Bolt, $349 for the U11 Life) and will include the HTC Fetch that can help you keep track of your keys, and in turn, if you lose your phone, the Fetch will help you find it.

Some key points worth knowing about these phones: the Bolt only works on Sprint, making it an ideal choice for those on that carrier, but obviously not a great option for those on any other carrier. On the other hand, the U11 Life works with all GSM carriers, including T-Mobile and AT&T.

It’s possible that even better deals on HTC-branded gear will pop up between now and Black Friday or Cyber Monday, but you can be assured that we’ll be posting as soon as we hear of them.

Update: The HTC One M8 is no longer easy to buy in shops, so you'll need to get it through other online portals. The HTC U11 is the newest phone from the brand, and is a much better buy for many, many reasons... although it costs a lot more as a result.

I'd hate to be a phone designer, trying to achieve unique and exciting features in a jaw dropping package for what is essentially a screen with some extra bits and pieces surrounding it.

So it's all the more impressive that HTC, after making the best-looking phone of 2013 (the HTC One), managed to make the HTC One M8, a phone crammed full of power and great features while improving the design that won it so many accolades.

The poor naming aside, the One M8 is a phone that takes the superb DNA of the HTC One, improves it in nearly every area and then packs it full of still impressive technology...and also finds space to pack in a microSD card slot.

On top of that the chassis has been retooled to now be made of 90% metal, up from around 70% of the previous model, and the result is a brushed aluminium design that seems compelling the second you lay eyes on it.

Nowadays we're well past this phone - the HTC U11 is the latest handset from the Taiwanese brand, and is miles better (with the price to boot). It's got the latest Snapdragon 835 CPU, a QHD screen, squeezable sides and a two-tone chassis.

Which makes it all the more confusing when you consider HTC has brought out the One E8; same size and internals, but with a plastic chassis that's still available for a lower price. See the differences here:

• HTC One M8 vs HTC One E8

And now - here's the bigger treat. The HTC One M9 is on the scene, and as such the One M8 seems like a little older hat than before.

That might not quite be the case though, as the new phone doesn't show an appreciable improvement in what it can do beyond a fancier chassis and higher price tag.

There are some extras: a 20MP camera will entice spec fans, if not those that value an immaculate mobile photography experience, it can shoot in 4K and has Dolby baked into the BoomSound speakers.

But is it the perfect evolution to the One M8? It doesn't seem so.

In lieu of the HTC One M9 Mini, the HTC One M8s has also rocked up, a cheap alternative with the same metal body as the HTC One M8 (though slightly thicker by 0,2mm), however it doesn't offer much of an upgrade over the ageing HTC One M8.

Or for yet another option there's the HTC One A9. This has a metal shell too and is lower end than the HTC One M9, its specs aren't much of an improvement on the HTC One M8, but its design is more iPhone-inspired.

• HTC One M8 vs HTC One M8s

Let's go back in time a little bit here: when it launched the HTC One X - let's not get into the fact that this company needs to employ a whole new team dedicated to naming products - HTC was in a nosedive.

From the heights of the HTC Desire, the world's first true iPhone competitor, it had fallen dramatically, and sales were in the toilet.

The brand needed a reboot, and the HTC One was just that. It wasn't a commercial success in the same vein as the iPhone 5S or the Samsung Galaxy S4, but it was critically superior.

So HTC had a tough choice: make a sequel that was mere evolution, an HTC One S (wait... that's been done) if you will, which would make the world realise it truly believed in its design trajectory, or reinvent the wheel again, try a different kind of impressive phone and run the risk of offering up a flop?

Somehow the company has managed to create something that stands astride both categories.

The HTC One M8 is an even better-designed device that takes the principles of the original One, expands them in the right places and adds in some more HTC sauce here and there.

The result offers up something that can compete with Samsung on the technological front yet still stand toe-to-toe with Apple, arguably the producer of some of the best-looking devices of all time.

Of course, the One M8 isn't a phone that's going to be to everyone's tastes. It started out expensive, coming in at upwards of £450 SIM free (AU$899, around US$820), but that's to be expected from a flagship phone like this.

Since its launch there have been a number of price cuts which means you can get a HTC One M8 for as little as £250/$270/AU$420 if you shop around, but that's still a sizeable chunk of change for an ageing phone.

The metallic chassis is really the primary reason, but it will be interesting to see if buyers are still as wedded to it when the One E8 offers such similar specs with a much lower price.

You'll need to be ready to pay a significant amount for the HTC One M8, but once you hold it you'll accept that it deserves to command such a premium.

There are other things that will put off some too: the fact that the screen is now 5 inches mean this is a larger device, one that can take two hands to operate at times, and it's even bigger than the 2013 version as a result.

HTC needs to sort out its efforts in the mid-to-low smartphone arena, but that's a topic for a different day. The HTC One M8 is a phone that's supposed to offer the best of the smartphone market, one that can survive the onslaught of the iPhone 6 and the Galaxy S6, while preserving HTC's heritage and bringing the bottom line closer to something more healthy.

Through a clever combination of technology and design, it appears the company has managed to do just that - and in today's impossibly congested smartphone market (especially at the high end) that's something to be applauded.

Design

As you can guess from the introduction, the HTC One M8 is a phone that is as much about premium design as it is about packing in the latest version of Android and a decent processor.

The brand took great pains to point out that the One M8 is a phone that builds on the heritage of 2013's One, but improves in just about every arena. The metal chassis is still there, and the aluminium casing now makes up 90% of the frame, up from about 70% previously.

This is probably the most significant change, along with the fact the back and sides are now more curved, as it brings a really impressive feel in the hand. If the original One was characterised by first-time users saying 'Wow, that feels lovely' the next iteration takes that message further.

HTC is obviously proud of the HTC One M8's design, as it retained it for the HTC One M8s, while sticking closely to the look for the HTC One M9 as well.

There will be very few brand-agnostic people that wander into their local phone emporium, pick up the HTC One M8 and a couple of competitors, and don't find that the Taiwanese brand's device is streets ahead in the design stakes - and I'd bet that most would be unable to resist a purchase after that.

The difference here between the One M8 and the iPhone 5S - two of the phones that lead the way in the design stakes - is weight and screen size. Having something that feels premium is incredibly important when you're spending so much on a phone per month, and while the iPhone is beautiful in its metal casing, it's too light to feel like you're getting something really premium.

There's a subconscious reaction when you pick up something for the first time, a natural expectation of how it might feel in the hand, and the HTC One M8, with its 9.35mm thickness and 160g weight, marries those two very well. Though the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6S pull off a similar trick, combining size and weight to great effect.

It's no coincidence that smartphones are packing on the grams a little bit these days. Where around 120g was the fashion a couple of years ago, now we're seeing heavier phones as designers try to meet a new paradigm (plus all that new technology needs to go somewhere, after all).

Let's look at the actual design of the HTC One M8 - and it's definitely equal parts evolution and revolution.

The flagship version will be this metallic grey, although a silver version that evokes the previous model and a champagne / rose gold option are both available too. However, this brushed metal effect is stunning, and helps distance the One M8 from its predecessor.

Holding it in the hand is a really pleasant experience, one that makes you feel like you're holding something you should spend a lot of money on.

Quite rightly some will baulk at the larger chassis, mostly down to the decision to include the Boomsound speakers above and below the screen, but once you've heard them in action you'll struggle not to agree that they're a worthy trade-off.

The iPhone 6 and even the Galaxy S5 have a more compact design language than the One M8, which is larger thanks to the speaker addition, but overall I don't think this detracts from the overall effect.

The headphone jack has been moved to the bottom of the phone, which will anger some users. I still think this is an unintuitive place to add the port, as I've become used to having it at the top. Arguments that it makes it easier to slip in and out of the pocket don't hold water, and it makes the phone hard to hold in portrait when listening to music.

But I've got some really good news for you phone-lovers out there: the HTC One M8 comes with a microSD slot! I thought this would never happen after the brand did away with the expansion for the original HTC One, citing design reasons and a general lack of need thanks to the ubiquity of cloud storage (which is clearly still not true).

To hammer home that last point, HTC told me that it re-introduced the expandable memory as it was a) able to do so without compromising the design and b) it had heard from so many consumers that this was a real sticking point for not buying the original One.

It's always good to see a brand climb down when consumers ask for something, and now this means that there are no issues about filling your phone up with photos and home videos as well as music and movies.

It also means it can look Sony's flagship from the same period, the Sony Xperia Z3, in the eye as that handset also comes with expandable storage.

The slot isn't that easy to access on the fly, as like the nanoSIM port it needs a small tool to pop open the drawer. That might be annoying for the more hardcore photographer, but most people will rarely, if ever, hot swap cards, so it just offers a cheap and easy way to increase the 16GB / 32GB onboard storage by up to 128GB.

The top of the phone is all plastic still, and this is to do with antenna technology as well as allowing the infrared signal to control home theatre devices.

This, combined with the thin plastic strips on the rear of the phone, allow for phone and Wi-Fi signal to permeate through the chassis... when you hear engineers talk about how hard it is to make a metal phone that can still connect to other devices, the design language of the One M8 is even more impressive.

The design isn't perfect on the One M8 though - although the following points are more little irritations than anything that undoes the work of the overall design ethos.

One area I'm really happy about is the button travel, as the original One has very flat keys that were hard to find and press. The One M8 improves on that massively, making everything easier to find in the pocket or bag and tap.

However, the keys still feel a little plastic and have a little bit of wiggle when rocked back and forth. This is the same criticism I had with the first One, and it got sorted after a couple of months, but I'd expect a phone of this calibre to have every part of the device locked into place - a rattle ruins things a little bit.

The power button is still on the top of the phone, which I can live with, but it's been moved from the left to the right side. I've argued with a few people about this, as it seems that some people prefer this orientation where others find it incredibly hard to hit.

I'm in the latter camp, as my finger naturally sits on the left of the phone and I found it very easy to unlock the first One. Now not only do I have to shuffle along to find the power button, but whenever I do so I accidentally engage the volume key, meaning I always keep turning the ringtone up and down.

This was probably the most infuriating part of the HTC One M8 - which isn't a bad thing to have at all, but is a poor thing to happen over and over again.

I'm also a bit perplexed about the fast HTC decided to drop the capacitive buttons (understandable given Android 4.4 KitKat's love of on-screen keys) yet keep the same big black bar that contains the HTC logo. This feels like a lot of wasted real estate on the front of the phone, and could have allowed the brand to keep the same footprint as the previous model if it had found another place to chuck its name.

The reason for this is probably due to the need to pack in the necessary internal components while maintaining the BoomSound speakers, but given the level of intelligence on show here when it comes to packaging the device, it seems like a missed trick.

But before you get too downhearted, here's the upshot: the HTC One M8 is one of the most beautiful phones ever made, and that's a statement that's even more impressive given we were saying the same thing about the device this time last year.

The improved use of metal in the chassis really works, and the shape is updated without losing any of the heritage of last year's popular model. The addition of a microSD slot is inspired, and while I can't say I'll ever get on board with the headphone jack being on the bottom, it's something that you can live with.

In short, if you want a phone that looks the absolute business in the smartphone world, AND builds in some top-end components, you couldn't do much better at the time and even now the M8 is one of the best looking phones around.

Blinkfeed

When it comes to Blinkfeed, HTC thinks that it's got a decent upgrade in what it's brought to Sense 6 on the HTC One M8.

True, it's definitely improved over the previous iteration, and visually it's been updated too - now that you can pack themes onto the device, the colour coordination (by default a pseudo-mint green) at least gives the app some kind of identity.

HTC was ahead of the curve with the creation of Blinkfeed too, as it knew that we were starting to 'snack' on content ever more readily in the increasingly smartphone obsessed times we live in.

However, it's still an app that needs work to be truly something that really scratches that itch. I say that having used the service on and off for over a year, and it sometimes delights and then equally disappoints.

Let's start with the good notes: there's a wealth of content out there, HTC has added more 'rich' feeds (those that play well with Blinkfeed, looking great and are regularly updated) to the mix that you can choose at launch, meaning there's something for everyone when using it for the first time.

The interface is much improved from the version that landed this time last year as well, with the side bar giving excellent access to your services and topics so you can choose something specific at any point.

I'm also so glad that HTC reneged on its decision to only allow the feeds it deigns into the mix, as now you can search for a keyword and have your own custom topics in the mix as well. Yes, they sometimes have oddly-sized pictures, but content is king and I can put up with the odd duff illustration here and there.

I'm also a big fan of being able to swipe through the news stories once you've opened one up, browsing for content I might be interested in. This is much better than scrolling down the list, which can truncate headlines and make the experience feel a bit choppy, even if it does look nice.

However, there are still too many gremlins in the system to properly call Blinkfeed a real strength. Choosing topics and services at first boot can be time consuming, and you'll find that you choose things with wild abandon that you think you might be into.

This leads to a lot of things you might not be interested in populating your feed, when to be truly successful it needs to grow over time to really be something tailored to the user. Yes, you can go in and uncheck some ideas, but most people won't bother as they don't know the root of the issue.

The keyword idea is also a weird one: you can add in a website using this method, but you'll have to put up with tweets and YouTube videos from the same brand. You can't just choose to have a feed of the news (unless HTC has pre-approved it) so you'll have to make do.

And weirder than that: the keyword Blinkfeed is a separate entity, not added into your main feed. So if you want to see info on a certain topic, you'll have to swipe from the left and select it. No idea why.

Here's the even weirder part: you CAN have the news feed, but you'll need to trawl the web, click the RSS icon on the site you want and then hope it will load up into Blinkfeed (which, it doesn't do as often as it should).

Why can't HTC allow this from within the app? Why can't there be some kind of rating system for stories within Blinkfeed that allows you to sculpt your interests over time, and would sporadically offer up new suggestions of sites and topics you might like?

It's a hard question to pose to HTC - I've reviewed countless apps trying to do the same trick of being smarter than the user in terms of finding them the content they would want, and it's a near-impossible task right now, it seems.

But this is the second go at Blinkfeed, and it's not quite good enough still... it's good enough to idly play with a few times a week, but it's not a real USP still.

Power pack

One of the main criticisms of the HTC One was the fact that it really managed to suck down battery when you actually used the phone heavily (I know, who does that, eh?).

It meant that if you left the phone in the pocket, quietly sipping data and not doing much else, you could get a decent day's use out of the device. Watch a movie or play a game for too long though and you'll be looking for a charger around 4PM.

That problem was rectified to a degree with software updates from HTC, but it was still one of the dicier devices on battery usage.

Well, good news: the HTC One M8 is a much, much better device at stretching your power out over the day (or even two) and that's because of the a) upgraded battery, now up to 2600mAh from 2300mAh but more importantly b) the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset at the heart.

You might not care much for the internal specs of a phone, but trust me here. Over 12 months Qualcomm's two chips of the period, the 800 and 801, have shown that phone efficiency can leap forward.

The likes of the LG G2 and Sony Xperia Z1 were both much improved on their battery when using the 800, and the top phones of early 2014 (the HTC One M8, the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the Sony Xperia Z2) are all using the 801 chip and look to run even longer on a single charge.

Of course now we're seeing phones emerge with the newer Snapdragon 810, but the Snapdragon 801 is still a great performer.

There are myriad improvements throughout the One M8 as well thanks to this new engine: the image processing of the snaps is much enhanced, data is collected and used more efficiently and pumping content out from the phone is a much more impressive experience.

You might not notice it, but the Snapdragon 801 (combined with 2GB of RAM) is one of the main jumps forward for the One M8 and I'm really relieved HTC managed to get the latest tech on board its latest flagship.

Duo camera and smart flash

Like the battery talk above, I'm not going to spoil the larger section later on where I discuss the camera power, but the new snapper on the back deserves highlighting here as it genuinely is the stand out feature (along with the design of the phone) that will mark out the HTC One M8 from the competition.

Yes, it's still the same Ultrapixel technology from last year, and it's not been bumped up much in the megapixel space. Actually, not at all. But the output is much enhanced, and not just in low light, leading to a more robust system.

However, it's the depth sensor that HTC has plugged above the main camera that really makes the difference here, as it allows you to refocus images after you've taken them, which is a really cool feature.

It's one that all the main manufacturers are placing within their flagship devices, but HTC is the only one that does it with hardware instead of software, leading to really impressive speeds when taking pictures and still having this advanced functionality.

You can check out the tests with the new Ultrapixel Duo Camera later in the review - and I'd really recommend that you do if you're the sort of person that likes a really strong day to day snapper.

Better Boomsound

HTC has gone to great lengths to talk up its improved speakers on the front of the device, and it needs to, given its added so much size to the One M8 to accommodate them.

The good news is they're SO much better than before, and the original One's sound wasn't bad at all. However with the new speakers everything is so much clearer, meaning better clarity between the bass and the vocals when listening to music, or just a cleaner sound when pumping up the volume to the max.

HTC told me that this was because it had separated out the channels within the sound, allowing it to clip the likes of the bass when things got too much for the speakers without affecting the other elements. It's a system that certainly works and side by side the difference is marked.

However, I'm still not convinced by Boomsound. Yes, it's brilliant when used, but the question is: when would you use it? I found that over the last year I was surprised how much the speakers came to the fore, be it showing off YouTube clips or having music in the background when decorating, but that wasn't regular.

I never found myself watching a full movie using the speakers when alone, as I still prefer the headphone experience for that.

The Boomsound speakers feel akin to a really nice bodywork set on a premium saloon car. They'll add a lot when it comes to cornering speeds and general performance, but you know that mostly you're using that car for getting to work and taking the family or friends to the beach.

The same here: the speakers are great, but they add a lot of height to the phone and I wonder how much use you'll get out of these premium features given modern smartphone use is still a very private thing.

But don't get confused - the sound that comes out from the speakers is really great, with crisp notes and deep bass for a smartphone.

Storage wars

And just briefly, let's have a 'hands in the air' moment for the fact HTC has caved in and brought a microSD expansion slot to the One M8. I thought such a thing was impossible for future HTC devices, assuming the company had bent to Google's apparent will to have more emphasis put to the cloud.

But HTC told me that it had listened to users, some of whom had said they wouldn't buy the One thanks to the lack of expandable storage, and so popped one into the One M8.

It's not easy to hot swap, given you need a little SIM tool to open the drawer, but it's much better than nothing and helps negate the fact that 6GB of the internal storage is taken up by OS requirements.

That's not the worst out there, but if you opt for the 16GB version and get really friendly with the Zoe feature on the One M8 as well as downloading some large apps, you would have run into trouble.

Now, all your media needs can be siphoned off and the internal space dedicated to apps instead, which is a big help, and it's good to see a brand backing down over a big issue.

Fitbit

HTC has tried to join the fitness game with the One M8 by bundling the Fitbit app with the phone from the outset.

It's a strategy that you could consider two ways: on the one hand, given that smartphone fitness is still a burgeoning area, it doesn't seem worth spending millions to develop a real core fitness API that allows you to get fit with your smartphone in the way Samsung is doing with S Health.

At least there's no unnecessary heart rate monitor here.

On the other hand, having a phone acting as a pedometer is a poor substitute for an actual tracker as you'll spend large swathes of the day with the phone on a desk or a bedside table.

Add to that the fact that there's every chance that smartphone fitness will take off, especially as Apple and Samsung start ramming the message down users' throats, and HTC's half-hearted attempt to be in the fitness mix could come back to bite it.

The interface on the HTC One M8 is designed to seem very similar to that which has gone before. HTC redesigned Sense, its overlay atop Android, back in 2013 to be more geometric and easy to use, and since then has upgraded the process.

However, visually it's still very much the same as before, bringing with it the Windows Phone-esque tiles of Blinkfeed and relying on stark fonts and colours for the widgets that adorn the homescreens.

There are some changes too, although most are subtle. The fonts have been given a polish to appear less obtrusive and look a little more modern, but there's very little else that shows that things are massively changed.

The HTC One M8 ships with Android 4.4.2, or KitKat for the more confectionerily-minded among you.

HTC has since updated the phone to Android 6 Marshmallow though.

This isn't a huge addition- you'll likely have to wait for Sense 7 to get all the new HTC One M9 features if they come at all, but it does add some handy extras, like a smart lock mode, which lets you bypass the lock screen if you have a paired smartwatch or other Bluetooth device.

Lollipop also gives you increased control over individual app notifications, adds a search function to the settings screen, brings more detail and a slightly new look to notifications, adds full lock screen notifications and overhauls the recent apps screen, showing you multiple pages of cards, rather than a single page of tiles.

But other than that the HTC One M8's interface is mostly the same as ever. Android KitKat had the effect of making things speedier under the finger, but also brought in transparent menu bars and a greater prevalence of full screen windows for some apps and this has continued to be the case with Lollipop.

While it can be a bit perplexing at times as the full screen option comes and goes depending on the app, being able to properly see photos or similar without any ugly notification bars is a real boon and it's good seeing it come to more Android phones.

The interface on the HTC One M8 is one that does its job very well – being able to equally offer easy to follow directions as well as giving the Android skin an identity.

It's a real shame that the notifications bar isn't slightly improved as it is on other brands' handsets – on KitKat you have to swipe down with two fingers instead of one to be able to toggle the likes of Wi-Fi on and off.

It should be simple, but for some reason I could never remember to do such a thing so was always forced into a few more taps where on the Galaxy S5, for instance, you can barely move for quick settings. Thankfully the update to Lollipop solves this.

One area HTC has always been strong in is the lock screen, and that continues with the HTC One M8. Where other phones don't really have integration with third party services, the M8 can seamlessly offer control of your Spotify on-device music using its attractive widget.

The same can be said of messages: you can scroll through them easily from this area, although it's not possible to click on one and have the One M8 launch straight into the message app.

A new lease of life is likely to be breathed into the HTC One M8 soon, as Android Marshmallow is on the way. This should lead to battery life improvements and new Google Now features, as well as powerful app permission controls.

Tap to wake

HTC has also nabbed a new feature that's making its way to more Android phones: double tapping the screen to wake and lock it.

It's an intuitive gesture, and one that Nokia first created with its Lumia devices on Windows Phone, and has since been run with more heavily by LG on the G2, G3 and LG G4.

The premise is simple: a very, very small current runs through the display when it's off to detect a double tap on the screen, which has the same effect as pressing the power button.

You can repeat the same trick on the lock screen once you've checked the time or skipped a track, meaning you don't have to wriggle the phone around in the hand.

It's a simple version of what LG's doing with Knock On – the South Korean brand is going bananas with the same thing though, allowing you to tap in codes to unlock, and double tap the notification bar at any time to lock the phone.

It's a really slick system and one that I keep trying on other devices, such is the intuition.

HTC's version is weird. It will sometimes work when placed on the desk, which is usually the time you want to check the time or work out why the notification light is flashing. But most of the time it doesn't function, but the second you pick up the phone it performs flawlessly.

It's nothing to do with orientation, but once you place the phone back down on the desk it will work again for a few seconds... there's something odd with sleep mode going on here. You have to move the One M8 slightly to wake the gyroscope and then the knocking will work.

Given I want to use this feature on the desk mostly, it's something that needs to be fixed with a software update, if possible.

E-Motional caress

A corollary of that double tap feature is the motion gestures, which now allow you to perform four different actions when the phone is locked by swiping up from different sides of the screen.

The same issue as above applies with the One M8 lying prone anywhere, with the gestures not working at all unless some motion is detected.

However, that's not as much of an issue here as the phone will generally be in your hand when doing the following: swipe right to open Blinkfeed, left to go to the homescreen, up from the HTC logo to go to the last app you were using and down to initiate a voice call.

The voice calling is markedly better than previous iterations, it has to be said, although it's still not flawless by any means, and usually asks for confirmation of the number no matter how clear you are.

The other three gestures are OK, but do take some getting used to and don't feel fully intuitive.

That said I did find myself using them more and more as time went on, mostly the right swipe to just open the phone. The frustrating thing there is the bezel is thinner, meaning you'll often have to make the action twice, but it does get more natural over time.

Given this seems to have little to no effect on battery life I think it's a good addition without being overbearing – it's definitely one of the better motion gestures I've seen, but the question still remains over whether we need them.

Performance

Here's an area that HTC is excelling in thanks to its improved optimisation of Sense as well as stuffing in a truly powerful chipset under the hood as well.

Even the iPhone 5S, a strong contender at the tail end of 2013, was comfortably eclipsed by the One M8 in our Geekbench test, showing that in real world performance the new One is an excellent choice for those looking for a bit of power.

It's hard to know if the Asian variant of the One M8, with its higher 2.5GHz clockspeed (compared to the 2.3GHz on show for the rest of the world) will be faster, but we doubt it would be by much, given that's largely to fill a spot in the spec battle.

It's recently come to light that HTC has admitted 'cheating' the benchmarks, which basically means optimising the performance of the phone when the presence of the app is found, which means the results below should be taken as seeing the One M8 in an extreme power scenario.

This mode can actually be activated in the developer settings, so if you want your phone to run at the below speeds then you can enable it - although it will come at a relatively severe battery cost.

It's interesting to note that Samsung is also guilty of doping benchmarks with the Android 4.3 build of the Galaxy S4, so in that respect the performance of the One M8 is relatively comparable.

If there was one glaring problem with the original HTC One, it was the battery life. This was hardly a surprise, given HTC's smartphones are notoriously hard on the power packs and often under-powered when it comes to the amount of juice on offer as well.

To that end, HTC is still ploughing the same furrow, but thanks mostly to Qualcomm's efficient Snapdragon 801 chipset, the battery life is much, much better.

When I spoke to HTC, one of the first things I asked was why the company had decided to stick with a smaller power pack (2600mAh when most competitors are heading north of 3000mAh) when the need for more power was probably its greatest issue.

The response was that it's not always necessary to have loads of power if you can be efficient with what you've got, and that's what's happened here. The brand is claiming that it's managed to pull 40% longer battery life with the One M8 compared with last year's model, and that claim seems to hold water.

The pixels on the screen are the same as last year, the processor is faster but backed up by a more powerful GPU, and Sense 6 is apparently a little kinder on the juice than previously.

In testing, I was really happy with the battery life of the HTC One M8 for a number of reasons. Firstly, firing the screen didn't seem to drain the battery percentage as much as before - the review handset of the HTC One that I tried last year would drop nearly 35% on the commute into work if I watched a film, listened to music and browsed emails / apps before getting to the office.

The One M8 can do the same thing but barely break the 10-15% barrier, which is better than the Samsung Galaxy S4 managed, and is more than decent in my eyes. It should be noted that HTC improved the battery life of the original One over the course of the year, but it's still nowhere near this model.

That said, the battery life isn't as amazing as I think it could be - the Samsung Galaxy S5 and Sony Xperia Z2 are better at longevity in the battery stakes thanks to more powerful optimisation and bigger capacity. The HTC One M8 only managed a 77% in our looped video battery test, which is rather average - however, in real time use, it's much better at sipping power.

For instance, a one hour run with the screen fired at all times to keep track of the GPS fitness app showed only a 10% drop in battery life, which is better than I expected - turn the screen off and leave it in a pocket or on a desk and it will last for hours.

The other thing that harms the power on the One M8 is still gaming - use this thing for an hour of something graphically intensive, like Real Racing 3, and you'll easily pull about 40% battery life and end up with a pretty toasty phone.

This is more to do with the integration of Android games into a variety of different hardware, but still irks given you'd hope to be completely wire free most days if you weren't near a charging port.

I'd wager you'd easily get two days' medium usage (checking emails, using apps but not playing games or watching movies) if you were thinking of getting this as a business phone - although that would negate a lot of the strong points that the One M8 has to offer.

The other thing HTC has offered up when it comes to battery life is Extreme Power Saving Mode, which sits somewhere between Samsung's Ultra Power Saving Mode (wait a minute...) and Sony's Stamina mode on its phones.

Essentially HTC's option limits your apps to just the phone, messages, mail (although not the Gmail app), calendar and bizarrely the calculator. You can set it any time you like, but it will automatically kick in at 5%, 10% or 20% depending on your preference.

Obviously the rest of the functions are cut right down too - the screen dims, the haptics are disengaged (so no buzzing under the finger) and background data is restricted to the important things only.

But here's the key question: does it really allow you to save power? HTC reckons you can get 15 hours off 5% battery life with this mode, which I consider really optimistic.

The problem seems to be momentum of power drain - if you're watching movies or playing games and hit the Extreme Power Saver Mode limit, the One M8 doesn't seem to slow down much on battery discharge. I left the phone in the pocket at 5% and 20 minutes later saw it was down to 3% and still rather warm. Leaving the phone alone on the desk stretches this out massively, but it does this even in normal mode.

Putting the One M8 into EPSM overnight saw just a 1% drop in power, which means it's probably better suited for those that plan ahead with their battery rather than in times of emergency.

My overall take on the HTC One M8's batter power is a mixed bag – there's no doubt that over time, adding more apps and so on, the drain will start to creep up. It's still miles better than last year's model, but there were times when it would happily drain 5% per hour without doing a huge amount – but then most others, that drop was down to 1-2%.

That said, use it from the word go and you could probably get nearly a week of battery out of the HTC One M8... that's a festival phone for those that aren't worried about being robbed or losing an expensive handset right there.

The HTC One M8 is a great smartphone, but that doesn't mean the brand has skimped on the essential features. I'm talking about call quality, the keyboard, the better-looking contacts... it's all excellent on the HTC One M8, and I'm glad that in an effort to overthrow the competition the core competencies haven't been overlooked.

The call quality and signal strength were two areas I was particularly impressed by - living in a house with very low signal gives me a great chance to test battery and call quality (as well as living a frustrating existence when I miss call after call).

I found that the HTC One M8 allowed me to make calls in new places compared to phones from 2012 and 2013, and that makes a big difference to me being able call from bed rather than having to hang around a window before having a momentary panic as to whether I've remembered to get dressed.

95% success rate, if you're wondering.

The sound quality of calls has always been good from HTC, but the rounded edges of the phone were more pleasant to press into the ear than the sharp edges of last year's model. The Boomsound speakers are smaller, but the sound quality isn't diminished thankfully.

HTC also is still one of the great manufacturers when it comes to showing off contacts, as it will pull in high resolution pics when you make a call if you've linked Facebook. This makes the experience of receiving a call much nicer than the boring pixellated options from other devices.

The keyboard from HTC is one of the best around out of the box, and it's testament to the design that I didn't crack during the testing process and install SwiftKey instead.

It's not as accurate as that option by any means, with the word prediction bouncing around a bit more than on the ultra-reliable third party app, but I was still happy enough with the accuracy to stick with it.

I can't wait until brands sort out the internet browser situation though. Like every Android phone these days (bar Sony) you're given the choice of the standard internet browser and Google's Chrome.

HTC's option is as strong as ever, giving you the chance to zoom in and have the words rejig on the page, or enable Flash for the websites that won't recode for the future. It still has the clever gestures to navigate around, and is generally very fast.

However, Chrome is close to being equally as nippy (although without the same bells and whistles that I really like) but does have an ace up its sleeve: browser history and passwords. HTC's browser can store your bookmarks, but it can't check out the important information from my desktop.

The day these two areas fuse together, I'll be a really happy man.

The camera on the HTC One M8 is arguably the most important part of this phone, and as such I'm going to dig into it with a little more detail.

It has been updated with HTC's Eye Experience software, adding in a few new selfie focused features to the already burgeoning application. We'll discuss these additions in this section.

Firstly, some kind of explanation as to why there are two cameras on the back (if you skipped the 'Key features' section of this review). The main camera is roughly the same as the sensor found on the back of the HTC One last year, meaning it's an 'Ultrapixel' sensor that can capture a lot more light than other devices on the market.

The likes of the iPhone 5S have come closer to aping this achievement, but in low light it offers some very good snaps indeed, making it look like there's more light than there really is.

However the Duo Camera set up, as it's erroneously named, adds in a new feature set to proceedings. You see, the reason that it's a misnomer is that only one of the sensors is a real camera, where the other scans the scene and provides depth, with that info then embedded into the photo.

You can then look at that photo and decide on the focus level yourself by tapping anywhere on the screen to give you a high level of control over the image. The same depth info allows you to change the background, copy and paste people out of the snap and into another (think rudimentary Photoshop) or add falling blossom for some odd reason.

In reality, you'll merely want to use the feature, called U-Focus, for one thing, and that's to bring background blur to your shots to give them a more professional sheen, and it works really, really well.

I can't think of a time where you'll want to focus on something else in the picture, unless you're looking to create a specific effect, and it can't sharpen up an out of focus shot.

However, there's one annoying feature: when trying to focus on something in the background, the 'Save' command stops you from being able to tap the top section of the screen.

Not a big deal, but it got in the way a few times.

HTC updated this software to include the ability to change the level of de-focus, which is a neat touch. At times you want some things still visible (like faces) and others you want to totally blur out whole objects, and the slider bar allows you to do this.

Sony's Xperia Z3 has the same trick, but HTC's One M8 is far, far faster at it.

The other big problem, and where I think HTC has missed a trick, is that you have to open the picture in the gallery, hit edit and then choose the U-Focus option, when really such a headline feature and one that warrants its own sensor on the phone, should be a mere button press away (perhaps the volume up key) rather than locked below reams of menus. It could even be enabled by default, as it would improve 19 out of 20 general snaps.

Talking of the volume key, the motion option is here once more. If you're holding the phone in portrait mode and it's locked, you can hold the volume down key and twist the phone through to landscape and activate the camera.

Well, in theory this works, but in practice you're rarely holding it in portrait mode exactly right, with the screen off, to activate the action with accuracy. It's much easier just to power on the screen and swipe up the camera icon from the lock screen, and this is an area that HTC seems to have put in a feature for the sake of it.

In terms of the snaps you actually take, it's a mixed bag I'm afraid. Don't take that to mean that the HTC One M8, despite the low megapixel count, isn't a fine camera phone. It absolutely is, and has a blazingly fast shutter and auto-focus ability (both essential for a decent device) and as I said in low light it's almost beyond compare - but that's only one part of the puzzle.

It seems this effort to capture all those lovely photons has a consequence, as any scene with light coming in from another source - on a sunny day, for instance - will wash out the photo and cause parts of it to horribly over-expose.

Similarly, looking at these images on a larger screen or zooming in at all shows a high degree of noise in the images, with blocky scenes easily found. This isn't something many are going to do regularly though, and the pictures on the phone screen or on Facebook will look great for the most part.

HTC's work into educating the consumer about the benefits of the Ultrapixel and Duo Camera seems rather weak when you consider that neither of these features are used in the HTC One Mini 2 (in reality, the One M8 Mini when it comes to design), the HTC One E8 or the HTC Desire Eye. It's not a good enough feature to command a massive premium, and given the apathy to 4MP shots, could be a problem.

The other area of improvement is through the Zoe feature, which makes a return to the HTC One M8 after mixed reviews on the first phone. It's a clever feature, allowing you to take a small amount of footage to capture a scene rather than just taking loads of photos.

The video reels can be extended now though, as once you've selected the Zoe mode in the camera lenses section (a new simplified area where you've got all the snapping options) you can hold the shutter button down to take a Zoe for as long as you like.

Once you've done that, you can then get an instant highlight video as before, and it still looks nice and professional. However, while HTC thinks it's cleaned up the Gallery app to allow you to more easily see these clips, in truth it's become something of a confusing mess.

HTC has also got some weird plan to be able to share these Zoes as part of an event online - that way, others with cameraphones (not even HTC variants needed) can add in their own pics to the highlights reel, which is pretty cool. Well, it would be if the app was out, but months later we're still seeing no sign of it.

After taking the Zoe and the pictures from the event, you can then look for them all in one easy place in the gallery. Except you've got a Timeline, Albums or Locations to choose from, with the middle option finding any picture at all that's on the One M8.

Then when you click in, the interface looks the same as the one before it, meaning it's hard to know if you're in the right place to see the video highlight reel, which actually is rather cool.

It's not a bad thing as such, but I said last year that HTC was trying to do too much here and it doesn't seem to have changed things that much - except to perhaps add a little more functionality in.

But let's get back to the camera performance - and there's a neat trick that many will love on offer here. There are a huge range of camera options on offer here and you can even add in your own settings and save them as 'lenses' in that camera option box I mentioned earlier.

This means you can set the aperture, focal length and ISO setting of a photo for a certain scene type you like, and then save it to use again later.

Or you can keep things a little simpler and use the excellent HDR mode (although one that shakes a little if you're not accurate when holding the phone in this mode) as well as tweaking things like white balance and exposure individually.

Here I saw one of the only times the One M8 struggled: when turning the shutter speed right down and the ISO levels up, the camera app would crash. It was real stress testing, and useless as a mode, but it was strange to see the phone freeze up even under this very heavy load.

The last thing to mention is the two tone flash, which is very similar to the one used by Apple on the iPhone 5S. This uses a more amber light to give a natural illumination, especially for skin tone, and the HTC One M8 will work out what's needed in terms of the colour balance before firing the shutter.

The upshot is good, and the flash is very powerful without being overbearing. This was excellent for flash fill shots where you didn't want to be left with reams of over-exposed brightness just so you could make the item you're photographing look clear,

The HTC One M8 doesn't have a great camera in the conventional sense, and as such can't take superb, well-balanced shots that you'd be up for framing.

However, what it does do (and to me, this is more important in day to day snapping) is take quick, in focus pictures and allows you to do so in a wider range of light levels.

The depth sensor gives awesome results at times, and while the brightness bleed issue is a big one, it's the only real problem I found with the phone that's given me a lot of photos I really like already.

The HTC One M8 has also been updated to get the Eye Experience features from the HTC Desire Eye. These include a number of things such as voice activated photos, automatic selfies, split capture (which combines images from the front and back camera into one photo) and more.

None of this improves the overall quality of the photos, though there are some gimmicky editing options being added, but the new options give you more control and a handful of unique extra features.

The beauty mode has been enhanced, and the real-time wizardry means you can see exactly how it's changing you before hitting the shutter.

This allows you to play with the level on enhancement you want so you don't end up looking like some weird alien.

You can switch camera modes more easily too, with a swipe from the side of the screen skipping you to the next one in the list.

At first the Photo booth and Selfie modes look very similar - and in practise they are. The only difference is the former takes 4 snaps consecutively for a classic photo booth effect. Fun, right?

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It's getting hard to really assess the media capabilities of a smartphone these days, given we're talking about devices with reams of storage, a Full HD or QHD display in your pocket (it was only a few years ago I was queuing up to spend a huge amount of money on my first 1080p TV) and the ability to render games better than some games consoles.

However, there's still a disparity in the media capabilities of today's modern mobile devices, and HTC has created something of a mixed bag in this area.

Music

Let's start with the positives: I'd happily say that the HTC One M8 is one of the finest devices for listening to tunes on, more so now there's a microSD slot added into the mix.

The expansion isn't terribly important for music unless you're desperate to carry around your entire music collection with you – that said, now there's up to 128GB of extra space on offer, that's an option available to even the most avid MP3 collector.

But the power I'm talking about is hardware based, thanks to the 2.5V amplifier stuffed into the headphone jack, which boosts the sound output dramatically.

Combine this with a decent pair of cans (although the in-box earbuds are pretty strong already, despite the faux-Beats colouring) and you've got a sensational sound output even with streaming services that can really get to some high levels of volume.

The latter isn't something to use all the time, especially if you value your hearing, but when on noisy public transport it's a real boon. I'd have liked to see something like that on the Sony Xperia Z3, where the noise cancellation is built in, but given you have to use dedicated headphones still to activate that mode it's not really something HTC should worry about.

However, it would be great to see HTC add in active noise cancellation to future phones that can use the microphone of any headphones (and most have this now) to make sound even clearer.

The audio output of the HTC One M8 is excellent even without taking into consideration the improved volume. The bass is rich and the rest of the range crisp and clear – HTC told me it had worked hard on sound processing as it seeks to step into a Beats-less world and make Boomsound a brand in its own right, and it shows.

The music player is one of the better out there too, making the process of finding and listening to your tunes very simple. It's irritating that Google's Play Music is in the same folder as the standard music player when you use the handset for the first time, as this will confuse some people, but whether it's the cool visualiser or the fact you can download lyrics to the phone, it's all easy to use.

I very rarely use the latter features, and I doubt many people will ever want to watch music playing and sing along, but when you're using the HTC One M8 as a music player on the desk with the Boomsound speakers it's a nice addition.

But one of the best elements of the One M8, when it comes to playing music, is the way it seamlessly interacts with whichever source you fancy, be it the onboard MP3s or Spotify (and other services).

This means that the lockscreen and notification area will let you skip and pause tracks in precisely the same way no matter which method you're employing – and that makes the audio experience so much better.

Video

Now, while I'm really into the audio output HTC is kicking through the One M8 (and that power extends to the sound from movies too) it still hasn't worked out how to make a coherent video experience.

I'm talking about the lack of a dedicated video player, a drum I've been banging for years with flagship HTC phones, yet nothing has been done to change this at all.

The reason seems to be simple: cloud content is presented as the main way of getting your video fix, with Google's Play TV and Movies the only nod to watching things on your new phone.

This app does have a section for your own pre-loaded content, as does the Gallery app from HTC, but neither makes it easy to watch any movies you've got as standalone files.

It's utterly perplexing, as you'll need to swipe and tap through both apps to get to your own content – and any apps that have downloaded video content (exercise videos for a fitness app, for example) are given the same priority level as files in the 'Movies' folder.

The huge problem of finding your own content aside, the HTC One M8 is more adept as a movie device than its predecessor thanks to the larger, brighter and more efficient screen.

One of the main problems I had with the HTC One was the need to push the brightness right up to be able to watch a video effectively, as the auto-mode was just too dark to see the action.

But with the new version the screen is cleaner, clearer and more adept at showing white levels than before, which means you're not reaching to slide up the brightness like before, which is good news.

It's actually as impressive as the all-new LG G3, which comes with a QHD screen and a much sharper display than on show here. That's partly to do with the fact the QHD display isn't as much of a step forward as some people think, but also that the One M8's Super LCD screen is actually rather good.

HTC TV

HTC TV is the app that HTC has kept from last year, and it's meant to have been improved. That's unfair, because it sounds like it hasn't, when there are in fact some new features to keep you entertained.

But the problem for me is not that the app is there, it's just that it has the wrong raison d'etre. HTC wants to be able to help you decide on your programming choice, when in reality it should just have a really good app for the infra-red blaster on top of the phone and be done with it.

The problem is this: the app can't really work out well what kind of programs you might like unless you meticulously plug in every show you've ever loved that might still be on TV - and you have to search for a long time to find some of them, if they're there at all.

And then the app will propose or alert you when shows you like are on through Blinkfeed or the app itself when you fire it up, but in truth all it does is tell you when repeats of shows you've already seen are on, or recommends things you have no interest in.

I suppose as I belong to the DVR generation, such things are unnecessary. If you're someone who only watches live TV, seeing that something you like to view is coming on and you can press the thumbnail to have the phone change the channel for you (as long as you've set up the remote already) is pretty cool.

However, not being able to sync with on demand services or streaming from the likes of Netflix makes this still a quietly unused app for me, even if HTC has tried to lump in chatter from the social networks during sports games, where you're most likely to be watching it live.

I'd much rather this app was all about the fact you can easily turn your phone into a universal remote, whereby you can even teach it new buttons by holding the old remote to the top of the One (M8) and pressing the right key until a pleasant buzz is felt.

The TV app is cool, but I really don't think - until on demand and streaming services become part of it - that this is something that a lot of people would use regularly on the phone.

HTC had a fancy trick up its sleeve when it launched the One M8 – a special case mode that converted the display into a cool and retro 8-bit mode to give you time, weather and notification information. This wasn't available when I first reviewed the handset, but now I've had the chance to spend a decent chunk of time with it.

It's the same as Samsung's S View case in that it's an official accessory that adds something to the functionality of the phone by its mere presence, but doesn't just offer a tiny window into the phone.

This is a much more impressive option, as despite being clad in rubber and silicone, the front cover is still able to register touch for a variety of actions.

The front cover of the case is packed with hundreds of tiny holes, but only those in front of the Boomsound speakers are uncovered to make sure sound can penetrate without distortion, but the rest have a clear covering to protect the screen as you'd expect a full case to do.

The main reason to being able to register touch is the double tap to wake the device, making it easy to check the time and see the weather, which alternates between an icon to let you know whether it's sunny or raining, and the temperature in a little animation.

If you get a message, the icon below changes to an 8-bit version of HTC's message notification, and the same happens if you swipe down from the top of the cover to automatically enable voice dialling.

If you've got a call coming in you can swipe up to take it or down to reject, with the latter motion still used when you're on a call – plus you can just hold the One M8 to your ear to take the call if you've enabled that feature too.

Annoyingly when a call comes in you can't always see the full name of the person who wants to get hold of you, with the name truncating rather badly – but then again, you can just open the cover to find out more.

The rest of the case is well put together and feels like it really protects the new HTC One, which is what you'd hope for when you're shelling out £35/$50/AU$50, which is pretty pricey.

However, there's a bigger problem with the cover, in that it doesn't fold all the way around unless you really force it. This leads to a hefty space behind the device when typing and holding it in one hand, and leaves an ugly angle when placing the phone down with the case open.

And you can't even use this mode to watch a movie, with the stand not being able to prop up the phone on the hinge or anything, unlike the main case of the original One.

While I'm glad the flap closes properly thanks to the strong magnets on the front, this inability to fold should put off any prospective buyer, at least until HTC fixes the issue.

It's terribly frustrating as the 8-bit effect is awesome – you can get a sneaky peek at how it shows on the screen when you open the case for a microsecond.

Most people I've shown the case to have been in awe of the clever little mode, which is good considering it's just a little trick with a couple of magnets and a team of designers putting in a few hours.

However, until the problem with the back folding away is sorted (the same thing means it's nigh-on impossible to take a photo with the case on, thanks to the front flap getting in the way no matter which way you hold it) I can't recommend this case to anyone, no matter how enamoured with the retro effect I am.

There are a number of really decent handsets on the market, and with the M8 coming down in price you'll have more choice than ever before.

We've compared it to its closest rivals on the market and we'll be updating this review when new models become available, but until then, check out our comparison:

Samsung Galaxy S6

The Galaxy S6 is Samsung's latest flagship smartphone and does an excellent job of improving on its predecessors in almost every way, which means the HTC One M8 has a bit more of a challenge on its hands with this new handset.

While the HTC One M8 bested the plastic-clad Galaxy S5 in the design stakes, with the Galaxy S6 victory isn't so assured, with Samsung putting in a lot of effort to make the S6 look fantastic. The HTC One M8 still looks great, however, but Samsung has all but eliminated HTC's advantage in this regard with the S6.

As the Galaxy S6 is much more recent than the HTC One M8, it's also packed full of top of the range components such as 3GB of RAM and an octa-core processor. The HTC One M8, though a fine performer, struggles to keep up with the cutting edge S6, so if you're after a future-proof top-of-the-range blower, the S6 is a clear choice.

The HTC One M8 does beat the S6 on price, however, with prices as low as £250/$270/AU$420 if you shop around. As the S6 is relatively new, you're looking at a heftier £350/$500/AU$800 asking price. If you're keen on saving a fair wad of cash, the One M8 is still a decent choice.

Samsung Galaxy S6 review

Samsung Galaxy S5

The Galaxy S5 was a big phone for Samsung, but in reality it's far too iterative compared to the S4. It just shares too much of the same design language and while TouchWiz is updated, the interface changes don't do enough to make people feel it's an all-new handset.

That said, it's got some very good bits: the fast autofocus camera rivals the HTC One M8's, but does so with a 16MP sensor. The depth perception is pretty awful compared to HTC's version, but the camera is more robust overall.

On top of that there's the fact it's waterproof, and is more hardy as a result. No metal here: the plastic chassis is much more able to withstand life's knocks, but it doesn't feel anywhere near as premium.

Tests showed the S5 was strong on the benchmarks but less so in real performance: Samsung still needs some optimisation here.

The innards are slightly improved, the screen is better thanks to more advanced Super AMOLED HD technology (but the HTC One M8's Super LCD is still impressive) and it has that removable battery to boot.

However, the S5 is one of the more underwhelming phones from the brand, so make sure you think long and hard before spending the higher cost these flagship phones are commanding - and with the S6 here, it's certainly no longer the top dog.

Samsung Galaxy S5 review

iPhone 6

If there's anyone that makes phones as good looking as HTC it's Apple and the iPhone 6 gives the One M8 a run for its money as the most gorgeous handset of 2014.

It's a tough call as to which looks better, but both are packed full of metal and feel as premium as they look.

With Apple upping the screen size of its flagship to 4.7 inches it's also now a very close competitor to the HTC One M8 and its A8 processor ensures it's every bit as slick under the finger.

Arguably the iPhone 6 has a more powerful camera and the app selection is still slightly better. Sure Android has more apps available, but iOS apps are of a more consistently high quality.

But the walled garden approach of iOS isn't for everyone and the iPhone 6 is substantially more expensive than the HTC One M8.

iPhone 6 review

LG G4

LG's previous flagship, the G3, arrived a few months after the HTC One M8 and it came with some big features, like a super-sharp and rather large 5.5-inch 1440 x 2560 QHD screen, but despite some slightly beefier specs the HTC One M8 had it handily beat in several categories.

With the freshly released G4, however, the HTC One M8 doesn't have such an easy ride. The speedy Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 and 3GB of RAM gives the G4 an edge when it comes to power, and although the leather design of the G4 won't be to everyone's tastes, LG has certainly created a unique looking smartphone.

The HTC One M8 still looks great, but if you want a handset that will impress people just by whipping it out, the LG G4 is the one to go for.

The LG G4 still struggles in the battery department compared to the HTC One M8 (as did the LG G3), though the stunning screen does make the LG G4 a wiser choice if you're keen on image quality.

Camera-wise, the HTC One M8 beats the LG G4 on paper, but in practice both snappers produce very good results, and you'd be pleased with either handset.

LG G4 review

HTC One (2013)

TechRadar's top handset of 2013 is still a viable purchase, and has been dropped in price compared to its new One stablemate.

The key differences are myriad: the One M8 has 90% metal compared to the 70% of the original, a larger 5 inch screen over the 4.7-inch of 2013's model, has a much better battery and an improved camera and BoomSound speakers.

It's not a case that the newew phone will be better than the old in every potential buyer's eyes though - the design is still very subjective and some will like the wider, more stable feel of the original.

However, make no mistake that the HTC One (2013) is the inferior phone in nearly every way compared to the newer edition. You've got to really want to save money if you want to go with 2013's option, and be prepared to take a hit on the battery life.

HTC One review

HTC One M9

The HTC One M8 has had a good run, but it's now been replaced by the HTC One M9, and although it's an upgrade, it's actually a fairly conservative one.

The design has been further refined but overall it looks very similar to the HTC One M8, not that that's a bad thing, as the One M8 was previously perhaps the best looking phone on the planet.

The HTC One M9 also has a lot more power, thanks to an octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor and 3GB of RAM, but it's not like the HTC One M8 feels sluggish.

The camera has been given a boost to 20.7MP, but it's lost its depth sensor and UltraPixels in the process, though the UltraPixels haven't been entirely abandoned, they've just been moved to the front-facing snapper.

The HTC One M9 also promises even better BoomSound speakers and benefits from the new features of Sense 7, such as a theme creator, which the HTC One M8 lacks.

So yes, it's probably a better phone, but it feels like a minor evolution, so whether that's worth the higher price tag it demands is debatable.

HTC One M9 review

HTC One M8s

The HTC One M8s has now arrived, bringing the premium metal look of the HTC One M8 to a more affordable – though far from budget – price range.

With almost exactly the same design as the HTC One M8, you'd be hard pushed to tell the two different handsets apart with just a glance.

Both the HTC One M8 and the HTC One M8s also feature a 5.0-inch 1080 x 1920 display with a pixel density of 441 pixels per inch – which is also the same one featured in the more expensive HTC One M9.

However while they look almost identical, under the hood things are pretty different. When it was originally released, the HTC One M8 was a top-of-the-range flagship device with hardware to boot – and its specs still seem impressive today.

This means it comes with a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor, while the midrange HTC One M8s makes do with a less impressive 1.7GHz octa-core Snapdragon 615 processor.

However both handsets come with 2GB of RAM and Android 5.0 Lollipop – so the power gap isn't quite as large as it could be.

Camera-wise the HTC One M8s has a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front facing camera, while the M8 has a 4 UltraPixel duo rear camera and a 5MP snapper. This results in the HTC One M8s having slightly sharper images, while the HTC One M8 wins on low light performance.

Even considering its age, the HTC One M8 is usually sold for more than the newer HTC One M8s, so if you don't mind a few compromises when it comes to power, you might be better off going for the M8s and saving yourself a fair amount of change.

HTC One M8s review

HTC One A9

The HTC One A9 is 18 months newer than the HTC One M8 and has a similarly stylish design, yet it's not actually much more powerful, as it's positioned as more of a mid-range phone.

That said its octa-core Snapdragon 617 processor makes it easily a match for HTC's ageing flagship and with a metal-heavy iPhone-like look it should appeal to buyers who want something premium but aren't sold on the M8's appearance.

Other highlights are an improved camera and Android Marshmallow out of the box. But with iffy battery life and a much higher price tag it's hard to recommend the A9 over the M8 unless you really want an iPhone 6S that runs Android.

HTC One A9 review

So, should you still buy this phone now that's it a few years older?

Well, on the one hand it's still an easy sell: the design says is still lovely in the hand, and the specs will keep it going with some basic apps - but not as many these days.

But it's not completely without flaw, as there are some areas where HTC has tried to do a little bit too much or been a bit overcomplicated, which might annoy some users.

We liked

It's been a hard few years reviewing phones – when the smartphone revolution came, they were all pretty poor and finding the best out of them was tricky.

Now it's the other way as, battery life aside, most of those unleashed are flawless in so many ways, and HTC is right at the head of that list.

The design is the huge win here – not one person I showed the phone to didn't hold it for a while and comment on the weight and feel, before being impressed by the screen quality. 

This is the sort of reaction I've only ever seen for iPhones before, and like them or loathe them, Apple's devices are a good barometer of quality.

I'm happy with the battery improvements, I like my re-focused shots and they'll look great on social media. The Boomsound speakers are better, HTC has thrown in some clever new apps and overall, the entire device is much better than the phone I really liked from last year.

Adding in a microSD slot is great, as while it doesn't really make a difference to many there are some die-hards that won't buy a phone without one. Also being able to take as many pictures, Zoes and videos as I wanted without worrying about filling up the space was really nice.

Even the alarm clock is improved – taking another problem off the table from last year.

We disliked

While I'm happy about the battery, it wasn't as stellar as I think it could have been. I know it's an odd thing to say, and it's really a negligible point given the battery life is OK on the One M8, but in comparison it might not stand up as time goes on.

The camera is still disappointing in some areas, meaning those that love to get really good pics they can be proud of from a camera phone might not want to go for such a low megapixel offering, despite the excellent low light capabilities.

And while it's not something I'm worried about now, I think HTC might have been smart to dive a little more into fitness and make the phone a little more resistant to dust and water.

I think design is key here, and if it's a choice between that and being able to dunk it or monitor my heart rate I think HTC made the right choice, but only if it's working out a way to put these things into a future iteration of the One.

Verdict

The HTC One M8 is a brilliant smartphone with very few flaws. Its main strength is design, but I don't think that's a negative thing.

It doesn't really skimp on specs though – even the weaker camera has some rationale behind it, rather than something to apologise for – and the audio capabilities, be it the Boomsound speakers or the music reproduction, are excellent.

You could say that, Duo Camera aside, there's no real headline feature of the HTC One M8, but that would do it a disservice as the brand has made a phone that really impresses at nearly every turn.

The shareable Zoe feature failed, and while the Video Highlight and BlinkFeed services are good, they've been left by the wayside. But at least HTC has decoupled these apps from the main OS, so when it upgrades them you won't be left waiting for a massive software update to change things.

The One M8 was the phone of 2014 - and given that subsequent devices haven't added much to the mix, it could still be a very good phone if you want a basic phone that feels great in the hand.

HTC was one of the first smartphone manufacturers to start using the dual-camera setup that's now so popular, but it hasn't made a handset with the feature since 2015. 

As reported by Engadget, though, HTC's smartphone division president Chialin Chang said today that we'll "definitely" see a new dual-camera phone from the company next year.

"We'll need to figure out how to make this feature stand out," Chang said.

Widespread interest in dual cameras took off after Apple introduced the iPhone 7 Plus with Apple highlighting the way the feature enabled a bokeh "Portrait" mode that left foreground subjects in sharp relief while blurring the background. Apple has continued the dual-camera tradition all the way to the iPhone X, which launches on Friday.

When HTC was touting the feature with the EVO 3D back in 2011, by contrast, it was chiefly emphasizing the way the setup created a mild 3D effect. 

The 3D craze turned out to be a fad, of course, but HTC tried to play up the way the technology allowed greater control over focus in handsets like the HTC One M8. The approach never really took off like HTC likely wanted.

Bokeh promises

Eventually, HTC ended up dumping the technology when it released its impressive HTC 10 device last year. Unfortunately, it largely failed to anticipate the Instagram-friendly ways Apple and other companies would use the same technology for other purposes. 

"Standing out" is certainly going to be a struggle, as now the market is crowded with phones from Apple, Samsung, LG, Huawei and Xiaomi that all feature dual rear-facing cameras. Unfortunately, as promising as Chang's statement is, it still sounds like HTC is struggling to to present a head-turning spin on a concept it helped pioneer in the first place. 

• What innovations will we see at CES 2018? 

While the Google Pixel 2 is set to be announced on October 4, HTC is celebrating its other creations with a customer appreciation week starting Monday, October 2 and lasting until Sunday, October 8.

These are the deals you’ve been waiting for if you’ve been itching to get your hands on three of the manufacturer’s big 2017 releases: 

• HTC U11 ($100 off at $549, plus free HTC gift pack)

This phone packs in the innovative and squeeze-friendly Edge Sense tech, the amazing BoomSound USB-C earbuds, super-fast Snapdragon 835 and a stellar camera.

• HTC U Ultra ($300 off at $449)

A premium mid-range device inspired by the LG V20’s dual-display combo. Its biggest flaw was its high price tag, so now that’s it lower, this is one that’s worth looking at.

• HTC Bolt ($200 off at $400)

This Sprint exclusive looks startlingly like the Google Pixel and is quite durable if you’re someone who’s likely to put your smartphones through a world of hurt. It’s not the best value out there, but if you’re strapped for options on Sprint’s network, you could do far worse.

• Accessories (50% off w/ purchase)

If you purchase a smartphone during the week-long sale, HTC offering any and all accessories for that device at a steep discount. Heck, even if you don’t spend big money, you can likely pick up a case of your choosing for just $10.

You don’t commonly see a manufacturer slash prices, so this is nice to see. We also enjoy how self-aware HTC is by holding the event until October 8, also written as 10/08, the time stamped onto each and every HTC smartphone in promotions. 

On top of the deals, HTC is hosting giveaways during the Green is Good week-long event. If you want to be eligible to receive a free HTC U11, HTC U Ultra, HTC Vive and more for free, just sign up through this link.

• You likely won’t see deals this good again until Black Friday or Cyber Monday 2017

“Enabling a more streamlined product portfolio.”

Hidden in that line of corporate-speak from HTC announcing its new partnership with Google may be a starker reality: no more HTC flagships after 2018.

It's no secret that HTC's mobile division has struggled in recent years. High-end handsets such as the HTC 10, U Ultra and U11 have failed to draw the limelight away from Apple and Samsung, while breakout competitors such as OnePlus and Huawei have strengthened their positions in 2017.

The Taiwanese firm isn’t blind to the challenges it faces, and has significantly scaled back its phone portfolio over the past five years. 

Head over to the official HTC website now and the firm's range comprises only a handful of devices, and it’s launched just three globally in 2017 (U Ultra, U Play and U11).

This strategy is by no means a bad one – OnePlus, for example, has just one handset, while Honor tends to keep its offering to around three devices at any one time.

For HTC though, this approach hasn't helped it shift devices at a rate to challenge the major players, and when you also factor in a highly confused marketing strategy that was unable to convey just how good some of its devices were, the brand’s line is still a strange one for consumers to properly comprehend. 

HTC’s problem hasn’t been making good smartphones – it has a long history of doing just that, but it’s really struggled to communicate why its handsets are worth buying to the general public.

However, given this already pared-down approach, the news that HTC will streamline its portfolio further is all the more pertinent. What's left to cull? The easy answer is the flagship. 

The final flagship over the horizon

Flagship phones are time-consuming and expensive to research, develop and produce. 

The demands on phone makers to introduce breakthrough technology – such as Edge Sense on the U11 – in new flagships further complicates the process, and adds additional cost.

It would be far more time- and cost-efficient for HTC to focus on the mid and mid-high tiers of the smartphone market, where it can easily churn out handsets without the pressures that come with the ‘flagship’ label.

Flagships do act as excellent halo products for the brand, and lead the way with technology that can filter down to the rest of the range – and without a lynchpin device at the top of its range, HTC could well struggle even more to stand out.

The new cooperation agreement with Google could well provide the trickle-down technology for HTC, although without some rather blatant HTC branding on new Pixel devices the link may well be lost – and let’s face it, Google isn’t going to be rushing to slap another brand’s name on its products.

And with the search giant continuing to produce premium Pixel handsets going forward, it seems counter-intuitive for HTC to go head-to-head with its new partner when there’s a whole market below the top end to penetrate.

Nothing will happen immediately though, as HTC also confirmed in the announcement that it has a team “which is currently working on the next flagship phone”, which we expect will launch in the first half of 2018. 

For now we’ll refer to that phone as the HTC U12, although the firm may decide on a new naming regime come next year. 

There are, however, rumors that HTC is preparing to launch a trio of new devices before the end of the year, which would fly in the face of its ‘streamlined portfolio’ claims.

We asked HTC about its plans to streamline its portfolio, but a spokesperson only offered the following statement: “HTC remains fully committed to our branded smartphone business, following the successful launch of our flagship HTC U11 earlier this year, and we are currently working on our next flagship phone. We have a very exciting 2018 product pipeline.”

The hope is that the deal with Google will breathe new life into HTC’s mobile division and see it rebuild its presence in the market, rather than heralding the demise of an iconic brand.

HTC has made fantastic phones in the past – the Desire, One (M7) and One M8 all scored coveted 5 star TechRadar reviews. And now, with Google taking some of the pressure off, it will have more time and energy to focus on creating knockout handsets – even if, in the coming years, those don’t include flagships.

• HTC U12: what we want too

Rumors of HTC selling its smartphone division have been common over the last few months, but the latest news suggests we may be very near to an official confirmation of what will happen to the Taiwanese phone maker.

HTC has issued a trading halt from Thursday September 21 ready for the release of information about the company. Tim Culpan, who writes for Bloomberg, reported the news and claimed it would be a "major announcement".

After rumors earlier this month suggested Google was nearing an acquisition of HTC we are tempted to believe this is what we'll hear about tomorrow.

What would it mean?

The exact details of a deal are unclear, and it may even be that HTC has found another buyer that isn't Google.

It would make sense for Google to buy HTC though. It's now almost certain the manufacturer of the smaller Pixel 2 that we expect to see launch on October 4, plus it may  be an easier way to bring the manufacturing process into Google's own business.

For more details on why Google would want to buy HTC we explored the topic earlier this month and you can read our full feature here. 

We don't know exactly when we'll hear the details from HTC, but fingers crossed it'll be at some point tomorrow as the company would like to resume trading as soon as possible after it's common knowledge.

• Must read: Could Google really buy HTC?