Gadgetory

if a company makes a transparent phone it's pretty mandatory that I take a look at HTC recently popped out their translucent HTC u12 plus it's not totally clear but it's definitely a step in the right direction it kind of reminds me of my gameboy color back in the day getting a close-up look at the internals we can see a bit of the fingerprint scanner cable and maybe a bit of the NFC we'll have to wait for the teardown to know for sure but I think it looks pretty sweet if you remember last year's HTC u 11 it ended up on my shelf of shame after shattering during my durability test it was awarded the least durable smartphone of 2017 it died because there was no buffer between the curved glass and the middle frame it looks like HTC has corrected that design flaw this year by flattening out the glass and adding an intermediary layer buffering the screen from the frame but the only way to know for sure is to test it let's get started HTC has some very unique differences in designs when compared with other manufacturers but I'll get to those in a second first we have the scratch test HTC is also one of the only manufacturers who's ever used a level aid sapphire screen on one of their phones which is a very massive and impressive accomplishment this particular u12 is using Gorilla Glass 5 on the display so it'll scratch at the very normal level 6 and the deeper groove at level 7 it's pretty much what all flagships are scratching at these days the u12 has dual front facing cameras which is interesting they are both the same type of lens there's no wide angle just dual eight megapixel cameras that do the whole background blurring thing Marquez does a good job of showing off the cameras if you haven't watched his video yet the earpiece is made of cloth and while most manufacturers make it so the cover will never fall out this earpiece has just held in place with some simple adhesive with time this might end up falling out on its own there is no buttons down at the bottom of the screen but if we flip the phone over we find dual cameras protected with glass a 12 megapixel main camera with OIS and a 16 megapixel telephoto lens which I'm a fan of the more things a phone can accomplish the better this one also films in 4k at 60 frames per second the plastic dual LED single color flash is pretty flush with a back glass panel you'll also see several microphone holes which HTC uses to do some pretty cool 3d audio while video recording is pretty interesting stuff HTC also claims in ip68 rating on the U 12 but with all of these extra microphone holes and some stuff I'll show you in a second I have my doubts it'll work as advertised the fingerprint scanner is invincible though thumbs up for that now the sides of the phone are where things start to get interesting they are made from metal but the buttons along the side are not actually buttons they don't click they are made for metal but surprisingly can pop off the foam body kind of strange now granted I understand that not everyone takes a razor blade to their phone but it is good to identify weak points a normal button wouldn't do this and once the capacitive button has fallen off it doesn't work anymore I really doubt this will happen to anyone with normal use in real life but a hard drop in the right spot might be a problem I'm a fan of this system and I'd rather just have a real button now my phone won't turn off and I can only listen to things at full volume HTC left their squeeze functionality in place and even upgraded it to edge sense - every time you short squeeze or long squeeze the sides something will happen personally I set my short squeeze to open up my audible app because that's just the easiest segue into the sponsor of this video the book I'm currently in the middle of is the Martian I actually use audible quite a bit yeah there's a movie but the book goes into way more detail about how the guy stranded on Mars Jerry Riggs his way to survival and the book is free with a 30-day trial by going to audible.com slash jerry-rigged or texting the word jerry-rigged to five hundred five hundred if you're into science and survival is pretty interesting plus you get to keep the book even if you don't end up using audible after your 30-day trial it's seriously a win-win text jerry-rigged - 500 500 or click the link in the description audible.com slash jerry-rigged the top of the phone as far as I know does not have any touch sensitivity but it is made from metal the SDN SIM card tray is also made from metal at the bottom of the phone we get one of the two stereo speakers and a USB C port but no headphone jack HTC has chosen to continue in Apple's footsteps some people like losing options but personally it's not my favorite the HTC u12 plus is rocking a 6-inch no notch 1440p super LCD display and lasted 10 seconds under the burn test the screen did go black which is normal for LCD displays and then the whole thing recovers - the oleophobic layer of course that just evaporates let's take a closer look at this new buffer layer HTC added between the glass screen and the metal frame since my video last year it's not made from plastic and it doesn't feel like aluminium it might be stainless but since the glass has flat this time around it might just work and keep the phone in one piece the initial bin flexes the phone quite a bit which I imagine is necessary because HTC needs soft metal for their squeezes to work flipping the phone over and bending again we still get that same massive flex and we see that the back adhesive comes completely detached from the phone the back glass is not structural since it just rests on top of the frame but it is important the waterproofing and now the ip68 is an IP nothing there is no shattering of the screen though which is ideal last year's phone was pretty much obliterated at this point non-functional HTC has done a good job of fixing that particular issue the thing that makes me doubt the ip68 water resistance is that the back panel is able to be removed super easily it'll probably never come off by itself of course but it shouldn't be able to be removed by hand this is the weakest adhesive on a glass back phone that I've ever seen but we'll save the teardown video for another day even though the side buttons can fall off and the earpiece might fall out and the weaksauce adhesive on the back panel might not be water-resistant if you ever sit on it the HTC u12 plus probably has a great personality just plop a case on there and it should last a while if capacitive buttons even work with a case I just know I won't be using this phone if you want to find out if the astronaut escapes from Mars or not go grab your free book from audible link is in the description and come hang out with me on Twitter and Instagram thanks ton for watching and I'll see you around