Hey, this is Dan with The Verge
and this is the new HTC U12 Plus.
It's the successor to last year's U11 and U11 Plus,
they were known in other parts of the world.
And it's the company's 2018 flagship smartphone.
Now a lot of things are very similar to the U11
in terms of design and features
but there's definitely some more modern upgrades here,
starting with the screen.
You can see it's a bigger screen than before,
it's now a six-inch panel.
It's very high-resolution, QHD+,
and it's a super LCD six panel instead of amoled
that we're seeing in other devices.
But it does have HDR 10 support.
Now, in the process of adding that bigger screen,
HTC did make the bezels on the U12 Plus smaller
above and below and then also in the sides.
So the U12 Plus is actually a little bit narrower
than last year's U11, which makes it
a little bit easier to hold.
Now the obvious change here is that the finger print sensor
is now in the back, it's just below the camera,
but it's right under where your finger would land
as opposed to on the front.
In terms of design, it's very similar to last year's phone.
It still has HTC's liquid metal type of design
which uses curved glass and these very reflective finishes
with a metal frame.
It's available in three different colors.
There's a translucent blue and a black available
in the US, and then there's this flame red color
that will be coming to other markets across the world.
All of them are very premium, very pretty.
They really feel nice and well-built,
as you kind of would have expect
from a HTC phone at this point.
The couple other different features on the hardware as well,
now there's still HTC's Edge Sense technology
which means that you can squeeze the phone
to do different things.
I can squeeze to turn on the flashlight here.
You can set it to whatever things you want.
You can set it to launch the assistant
or launch camera or launch an app or anything like that.
That hasn't changed too much from last year's phone.
But one new feature is ability to double tap
so you can double tap it to set different things.
Right now this sets...
Brings up some buttons on the screen
but you can set it to open an app
or change the screen size and things like that.
And then the buttons here on the side,
the power and volume rocker, are not actual buttons
in the sense that you're used to.
They don't really depress when you press them,
instead you get a little buzz when you click the button.
Which feels very weird at first but is kinda neat.
It uses the same kind of underlying technology
that has the pressure sensitivity on the sides
but it's applied to the buttons here,
so that's a little different.
On the bottom you got a USBC charger.
There's no headphone jack, not huge surprise there,
there wasn't a headphone jack last year
so unfortunately there's not one this year
but HTC does bundle it's Usonic headphones in the box,
so you get those with the phone when you buy it.
And it does have dual speakers.
So there's speaker on the bottom
as well as speaker on the top
for pretty loud and vibrant sound.
Now inside the U12 Plus has a Snapdragon 845 processor,
6 gigabytes of RAM, and it comes in
64 or 128 gigabytes of storage.
Both of them support Micro SD card expansion as well.
And then of course like last year,
it is ip68 water resistant.
Now the other big new thing here
is that it's got dual cameras.
And not just on the back like we've seen
on a lot of phones lately, but also on the front.
So on the back there's two cameras,
there's a 12 megapixel sensor on the wide angle camera,
and then a 16 megapixel sensor on the telephoto camera.
And then let's you do the standard portrait mode,
blend, bokeh effect type of things.
And then on the front there's two 8 megapixel sensors here
that allow you to do those things for your selfies as well.
One thing that is unique is HTC's software
let's you actually adjust the effect of the bokeh
after the fact, and then you can also change
the focus point around which is kind of a unique feature
that we haven't seen before.
The U12 Plus is launching with Android 8.0 Oreo
out of the box.
It will be updated to Android P at some point
later this year but there's no timing yet for that.
It's running HTC Sense interface which,
if you've been using it for the past couple of years,
you know that it's pretty similar
to what Google provides on it's pixel phones
but not exactly.
Still, it's very clean, easy to use version of Android.
There's really little to complain about
with Android HTC phones at this point.
Now HTC has been building premium phones for years
and the U12 is really no different.
It feels great when you hold it.
It's got really nice, tight tolerances.
The materials are really nice.
And it's also because it's a little bit narrower
it's actually a little easier to hold.
It'd be nice if it had wireless charging
but unfortunately that's not available this year.
But it does have quick charging over a USB
through Quick Charge 3.0 or Quick Charge 4.0
if you have a compatible charger.
Now with the premium feel comes a premium price.
And this is gonna be priced pretty much
in the same range as other premium Android smartphones
that you can buy right now.
And HTC is not gonna be selling this through carriers
but you will be able to get it
through HTC.com or Amazon.com.
And it's gonna support Verizon, At&T, or T-Mobile.
The pre-orders actually start today.
It's gonna be shipping in the beginning of next month.
For more on the HTC U12, including our forthcoming review
where we'll take a look at all of these features
in more detail, please check out TheVerge.com
as well as subscribe at YouTube.com/theverge.