Gadgetory

here in 2018 it seems like every smartphone manufacturer no matter how big or how small is trying to find different or unique ways to make their products stand out from the competition this is the you 12 plus it's HTC's take on what that different or unique thing should be and it has some pretty interesting ideas but it doesn't necessarily execute it flawlessly so I want to start off this review by talking about what makes the you 12 plus different and there's a few different things one is the design two is the edge sense technology and three is the cameras but let's start with the design first at first glance the u12 plus looks pretty similar to a lot of other smartphones on the market it has glass on the front glass on the back and a metal frame that wraps around the sides which is something that a ton of manufacturers are doing but what makes it you two a plus a little bit different is that it has some unique color options like this transparent blue version that actually lets you see some of the phone's internals on the backside which is a pretty cool effect it kind of gives the phone a little bit more of an industrial look and the design is pretty attractive overall it has rounded corners and a curved backside that makes it pretty comfortable to hold and the build quality is excellent just like you would expect from the HTC device at this point the u2l plus has the edge Sense technology that was first introduced on the U 11 so you can still squeeze the phone to access different shortcuts like Google Assistant the camera the flashlight or pretty much anything that you want but now you can actually double tap on either the left or right side to access an additional shortcut by default it's set to one handed mode and if you like one handed mode it's there but if you don't you can change it to whatever you want I personally have mine set to taking a screenshot which I find to be much more useful but the real kicker here is the buttons on the side of this phone the buttons are no longer real physical clicking buttons like you normally expect on other Android smartphones these buttons are solid state buttons so they don't actually move or depress and they're basically just pressure-sensitive I like the idea that HTC has behind these pressure-sensitive buttons but the execution isn't quite there yet I assume that these buttons are meant to feel natural and they're supposed to mimic real physical clicking buttons but they don't necessarily feel that way it's not like apples forced touch where the trackpad on a MacBook Pro feels like a real clicking trackpad even though nothing's actually moving these buttons just feel like buttons that are vibrating when you press on them and they don't really feel natural hopefully that's something that HTC can address what they software update or maybe in future versions of their smartphones the biggest flaw with these buttons though is that you can't actually register multiple button presses at the same time so pressing volume down and power to take a screenshot like you normally would on any other Android phone doesn't work so that sort of ties back into why I use the DoubleTap on the sides to take a screenshot and so far that's really the only workaround that I found like a lot of other smart phones the Utah plus has dual cameras but not only does it have dual cameras on the rear it also has dual cameras on the front and the two front facing cameras are 8 megapixels @f 2.0 and because you have a secondary sensor this allows for portrait mode and equality of the portrait mode doesn't really seem any better or worse than other smartphones with portrait mode on the front facing camera but the dual sensors do allow you to change the iboga before and after the fact which is something that portrait mode on other smartphones don't always offer as far as the rear cameras are concerned you have a primary 12 megapixel sensor at F 1.8 with optical image stabilization and a secondary 16 megapixel sensor at F 2.6 and this allows for 2 X optical zoom and of course portrait mode because everybody loves portrait mode picture quality from the rear cameras low is actually pretty good details are crisp and sharp colors are nice and vibrant and dynamic range is decent but it does have the tendency to overexpose and you notice this a lot when shooting in low-light you get a lot of overexposed highlights with a lot of blooming and lens flare effects but generally low-light shots are well above average I would say there's still a lot of detail not a whole lot of noise and white balance is also pretty good when shooting lowlight the Utah plus is a flagship phone obviously so it has all these specs that you would want out of a 20-18 flagship inside there's a Snapdragon 845 processor with six gigabytes of RAM which provides for very fast performance I haven't had any issues with lag it's been a very fluid and responsive smartphone it's also ip68 water and dust resistance there's a fingerprint sensor that's very conveniently placed on the back side and it also has a micro SD card slot for expandable storage unfortunately there's no headphone jack but the u11 didn't have a headphone jack either so it's not really all that surprising that the u12 plus doesn't have a headphone jack but HTC does include their USB type-c use sonic earbuds included in the box and I actually really like these earbuds I enjoyed them quite a bit onto you 11 they sound fantastic and they're also noise cancelling so I enjoy them just as much on the you 12 plus I would say the most disappointing thing about the you 12 plus is its battery life I'm only averaging around 3 hours of screen on time maybe 4 if I'm lucky and that's pretty underwhelming considering it has a decent size 3500 milliamp hour battery and it also doesn't have wireless charging even though it has that glass back on the front that you 12 plus has a 6 inch 18 by 9 display with quad HD resolution and it uses Super LCD 6 technology and the screen itself is very colorful very vibrant it has fantastic viewing angles and it gets plenty bright that seeing it outdoors in direct sunlight was not really an issue the screen itself also has pretty thin bezels on the sides and the top and bottom bezels are not really that big either and the best part is it doesn't have a notch so if you really hate notches the u12 plus is going to be one of the few options that you have this year without a notch on the software side of things you're looking at android 8.0 Oreo with HTC Sense on top and I'm a pretty big fan of cents I think it's one of the better skins out there it's not cartoony looking it has a very nice and modern look to it it's simple and easy to navigate and ever since HTC got rid of a lot of the duke the applications it's been a very clean experience one of the newest features of sense that I really appreciate if the smart rotate and this will rotate your phone based on how you hold the phone instead of the phone's actual orientation so if you're holding the phone in portrait it will always stay in portrait but if you change your grip to a more landscape style grip then it will change to landscape and this is a total lifesaver if you're laying down in bed or laying on the couch and you don't want your phone to automatically rotate this is a feature that I know a ton of people are really gonna like if you want to buy the Utah plus it's available as an unlock device for 849 dollars which is a pretty hefty flagship price but its competitive to the galaxy s 9 and also the iPhone and I think it has a lot of things going for it to justify that price tag it has fantastic build quality a really nice screen dual cameras on the front and rear and also some pretty cool stuff with the edge Sense technology even though it isn't quite perfect it's probably going to be another smartphone that gets swept under the radar because it's not being sold through carrier stores but if you're looking for a smart phone with a modern design and a lot of modern features and a display that doesn't have a notch the Utah plus is definitely worth the look so that pretty much wraps up this review of the HTC u12 plus let us know what you guys think of it down in the comments section below and as always if you enjoyed this video please give it thumbs up we definitely appreciate it subscribe to the channel which is down below if you haven't already hit that notification bell so you don't miss out on future videos and of course check us out on social media instagram twitter snapchat google+ all that good stuff is linked down below and of course check the website as well and georgia thorny calm because we are your source for all things Android