Although HTC is not the handset-maker it once was, the company still produces a steady stream of smartphones. We weren’t blown away by the high-end HTC U12 Plus when it appeared last year, but now I’ve finally had an opportunity to play with its mid-range alter-ego, the U12 Life. Does it fare any better?
Well, at £290 SIM-free at the time of writing, this handset sits right in the middle of a very competitive market sector, so it needs some standout features.
One of these is the design of the handset’s back. About two-thirds of it has a laser-cut series of horizontal stripes, while the upper third is smooth and much more reflective. This means the handset is relatively unslippy to hold, and the dual styling looks distinctive. That’s a double plus. The back doesn’t seem to attract fingerprints as much as many handsets, either. A triple plus, then…
Image: Sandra Vogel/ZDNet
This is a relatively large phone measuring 75.4mm wide by 158.5mm deep by 8.3mm thick and weighing 175g. A 6-inch, 18:9 aspect-ratio, 1,080-by-2,160 pixel screen makes the U12 Life good for media consumption, in particular. You can adjust the display’s colour temperature using a slider that moves between warmer and colder tones, but there’s no front-camera notch — a feature usually reserved for higher end phones. The stereo speakers deliver good volume and fair-quality sound, although it does get a little tinny at higher volumes.
There is 64GB of internal storage, of which 53.17GB is free out of the box. You can add storage capacity via a MicroSD card, although you’ll have to use one of the two SIM card slots to do so.
Even at this price, people are starting to expect a dual camera system, and HTC duly delivers with a 16MP main camera and a 5MP secondary camera for depth sensing. I found that photos were of acceptable quality, and the depth sensor made it easy to get bokeh effects (sharp subject, blurred background). The front-facing 13MP selfie/video calling camera has the unusual addition of a flash, making selfies in low light a possibility.
[“source=zdnet”]
