HTC U12+ Review: A Phone With No Buttons! By Marques Brownlee

You guys probably thought I forgot about this. One hey. What is up guys MTV HD here- and this is the HTC u12 plus so HTC has had a couple fascinating years, leading up to this new phone, and this turns out to be one of the few flagships available in 2018 with no notch and a couple super unique features and the other thing is in the US or anywhere. Really this phones not going to be in stores that may explain why you or someone you know hasn't really heard of this, or you're hearing about it for the first time, not as much hype around the sky, but it will be available online for 849 bucks. So that's definitely high-end it's a premium flagship. So is it worth your money? Well, first, just as far as design, this is the translucent blue color.

It's the only color of this phone I consider buying it in as you can see that the glass is a little see-through in the top half which I love. It's not quite jury-rigged everything fully seeing all the components see-through, but it's still pretty unique, and I'm a fan of this I'd love to see. Other phones offer something similar to this too. There are some other colors available for this phone as well, but they aren't see-through. So who cares about them? But this is the glass back enabling this, of course, so the whole back of the phone is now this glass, it's much slipperier, but there's no wireless charging.

So if you hated one plus we're going glass back but no wireless charging, then you have to paint this one too, but bottom line. I am a big fan of the way. This one looks, even though it does catch plenty of fingers, prints, I, think it is one of those where I would just not ever put a case or a skin on it. Just leave it the way it is the rest of this phone looks pretty normal, though for 2018, you know pretty simple design lots of HTC cues and shape, but you wouldn't suspect anything to stand out crazy, just looking at it, but there are actually a lot of fascinating things about this phone. First, the squeeze is back, and it's like leveled up.

It still has the side squeeze sensitivity from the U 11, so you can set a shortcut to launch something when you squeeze the phone but also have different types of squeezes. So a quick squeeze is one thing and a long squeeze is a different shortcut, and on top of that, you have pressure sensitivity, all the way up the side, the phone so while you're holding it. If you double tap the side of the phone with your thumb, it acts as a shortcut to one handed mode and if you switch hands and Doubleday with the other thumb, that's the other side shrinking to one-handed mode, so a lot of hand gymnastics, but it's being really smart about what it does with that pressure sensitivity. So that's pretty impressive. When it works, it's not always perfect, it can get pretty finicky, and sometimes I tried an outright, doesn't work and there's a lot of ghost taps, and it can fix itself after a while, but basically the only downside has been that it doesn't always sense the tap, but then, on top of all of that, the most interesting part about this phone might not be.

The color might not be the pressure-sensitive squeezed feature. It's that this phone doesn't actually have any real buttons. The power button and volume button on the side of this phone aren't normal click actuating buttons. There are even more pressure sensitive areas on the side of the phone, so when the phone is often you press the volume buttons, they don't move, you know kind of like apple's, solid-state touch ID home button, it's not an actual button until the phone turns on and when it is on. There's a vibration motor that kicks in and simulates the feel of pressing a button when you squeeze or put pressure on that area.

So, okay, how have these fake buttons played out in real-world use? Well, like I, said, the best version of this would be Apple's haptic engine. Where have you pressed the home button on an iPhone eight you're, fully convinced, usually that you're clicking an actual button? It still feels like you're, pressing something that clicks. This is a decidedly average vibration motor inside, so it's not nearly as convincing I've gotten used to it. I expect it now, when I press the button to have that feeling, but it's its its way. Worse, there's.

Definitely a slight delay like when I press, the home button versus when I actually feel the vibration that is supposed to simulate a click, there's a slight delay that makes it feel software driven rather than like the haptic engine being exactly when I click it that's the difference, it doesn't feel as real, and it becomes really obvious when you try to double press any of these buttons like double tapping. The power button doesn't do anything double tapping. The volume buttons doesn't raise the volume twice. You have to really press it slowly to actually get it to work, and this is not fun at all. This is not a good experience.

I think for some people this can be a deal-breaker in this phone. I personally still do prefer perfect click buttons and I think I'll continue to praise them until haptic engines get way better, but this is probably the biggest downside of this phone. Okay, another unique thing about this phone. You may have already noticed the dual cameras on the back, but you also get two cameras up top here at the front: ? selfie cameras- and these are just for portrait mode, selfies, and I was hoping. I was hoping, one of them would be a regular camera and one of them would be a super wide-angle selfie camera.

So you could take super wide angle selfies without having to do some corny stitching effect, but no. This is just the same focal length slightly separate from each other to do better, blur and both for portrait mode. The actual both effect isn't actually any better than average I. Don't think something like a pixel or a galaxy s, 9 or an iPhone are still hit or missed the same way. This one is with hair and faces, but it does a decent job.

The main advantage, which we also see with Samsung with a single camera, but the main advantage is you can control the amount of background blur after you take the photo. So that's nice, plus all the other interesting stuff HTC, usually throws in the selfie camera they're kind of like Samsung. They feel they need to go crazy with beauty mode. There are many things you can do to your face in beauty mode, but you may or may not ever use those but yeah. Those are the main unique things about the zone.

That may not be obvious from the second. You pick it up. I'd say the rest of this phone is normal for 2018. It's a flagship that checks a lot of boxes. It has high-end specs and a pretty conservative, but likable design, its IP 68 water-resistant, which is great.

The fingerprint reader, is on the back in the middle again right where it should be excellent use of space high. It has a micro, SD card expansion slot, and it really has a lot of what people have been asking for. No notch thin side, bezels great, build great display high-end specs, quality, camera, etc. The only thing that's really missing is the headphone jack. Even the dual speakers are a nice upgrade, that's not boom sound or anything, but it's the one at the bottom plus the earpiece doubles as a front-facing channel.

So you're not gonna accidentally block your audio very easily with this setup, and they do get loud and sound full, and then it has a thirty-five hundred million power battery which sounds like it should be plenty, but it's definitely not. It could have something to do with the display. So it is a 6 inch.28 80 by 1440 Super LCD panel will work. It has something to do with H, see software, but I'm, basically barely getting a day out of it. When I thought I'd be getting a day-and-a-half easily it charges quick and that's nice.

There's no wireless charging like I said, but that's not a deal-breaker for me. I just wish the battery life was better to begin with. Maybe software can be improved. Maybe a software update can actually make that better. So that just leaves us with the software and the camera.

The software is HTC Sense. So it's about what you'd expect, and the camera is pretty good, so HTC, Sense UI, is on top of Android 8.0 Oreo and hopefully with Android P coming very soon, and I've never had a problem with HTC Sense. Really it's never been my favorite skin on top of Android, but it's also been pretty tame for a while. You still have blink feed to the side of the home screen. You still get all these fancy.

Looking icons with these shadows now and everything. There is a customizable second panel next to the navigation bar for shortcuts, which is pretty cool, but you can't add app shortcuts I wish I could add a custom app down there if I wanted, but that would have been even cooler. They added face unlock, which everyone seems to be doing now, but I still prefer this phones fingerprint reader, which is great and there's even a smart, rotate feature which I love, which keeps the phone in portrait mode at all times when it knows it's being gripped in portrait mode but lets it rotate. When it's not being gripped that way, I think that's really cool. So it's mostly what you're used to from HTC here, pretty quiet, just tossing in a couple of things here and there over the last couple of years.

You can still him it, but there's no radical design changes here. It's its about what I expected and then on. The back. The camera or cameras like I said, are pretty good, so you're getting a 12 megapixel main shooter with F 1.75 aperture with optical image. Stabilization and your secondary is a telephoto 16, megapixel, shooter, f 2.6 with no IS and the photos. I've been taking their, not quite the best in any smartphone, but they do fit right in here with I would say a top 5, good detail and color, and even a shallow depth of field and a kind of nice.

Looking both. If you get shallow enough, I think the cameras the biggest flaw is that it tends to overexpose making things a little too bright, and you'll notice. It doesn't have the best dynamic range, so you might lose a little of highlights, but overall I'm sure automatic metering can be adjusted, and you can always do manual metering easily, with slider, so I'm just being picky I think this is a sneaky top five smartphone camera right now, I think right now, your clear top dogs are pixel to iPhone ten, and then this falls right in line with like Galaxy, S, nine, and I'd say better than one plus six, so yeah overall right now is a packaged. HTC u12 plus, is a flagship worthy of your consideration. You know it's SPENT like a flagship.

It's definitely built like a flagship, and it's price like a flagship but as an overall package. It feels like this. This phone is like almost there. It's its I mean I, guess if you're a super anti notch, if you're one of those people that left a comment saying this phone has a notch, so I'll never buy it. Then I, guess your choices are like this and galaxy s 9, because this is one of the few phones without enough, but other than that.

This phone legit checks a lot of boxes with a thumbs up and really only fall short in the buttons and the battery life like these buttons I'm, just barely okay, with like I'm used to them now, but I feel like I'm, not gonna, be happy about them in two or three years, but they are what they are, but it's the subpar battery life you got to think about and that experience that all comes with it and I think HTC is not always tops or first to update their phones to the new OS, but fingers crossed they get to Android peace soon like they seem to have promised counting on you guys anyway. That's it that's HTC, u12, plus you think you could rock a phone with no real buttons. Let me know what you think in the comments below I'll be hanging out. There answering questions, of course, as usual. Thank you for watching doc.

Together, the next one peace.

Source : Marques Brownlee