Good old HTC isn’t giving up on it’s smartphones yet, despite the acquisition by Google, as the company has launched two new mid-range devices to the market. The HTC Desire 12 and Desire 12+ come with 18:9 displays and a design that feels rather familiar on the back, though it certainly looks far more premium than just being a typical mid-range device, as they both come with acrylic glass back surface and a metal frame.
The Desire 12+ features a 6″ HD+ display, it is powered by a Snapdragon 450 processor and offers 3GB RAM and 32GB storage, this is also the very first HTC phone to come with dual cameras on the back, which comprises of a 13-megapixel main sensor with a f/2.2 aperture and a 2-megapixel secondary sensor that measures depth of field. The selfie camera is an 8-megapixel sensor that comes with an f/2.0 aperture and LED flash, it also supports HDR and 1080p video recording. Unfortunately, HTC has left out BoomSound speakers and audio enhancement this time, there’s no fast charging and it also comes with a questionable 2965mAh battery, but thankfully, the headphone jack is present.
As for the Desire 12, the specs step down to a MediaTek MT6739 quad-core processor and a 5.5-inch HD+ IPS display, RAM and storage remains the same as it’s higher end sibling at 3GB and 32GB respectively. In terms of cameras, the Desire 12 features a single 13-megapixel shooter wiht a f/2.2 aperture and a 5-megapixel f/2.4 selfie camera. The Desire 12 doesn’t have a fingerprint sensor, BoomSound speakers and fast charging, and it comes with a smaller battery at 2730mAh.
The Desire 12 and Desire 12+ will be available starting April 2018 onwards with no mention of pricing yet, while it’s great to know that HTC is still releasing great looking devices, the new Desire smartphones are now clearly a step down from what we used to see from the company, this is a clear direction that the company is reserving it’s flagship features on the U series, and whether these new Desire smartphones will help HTC gain back its fame here, that would depend on how strategically priced they are as compared to companies like Huawei, Oppo and Vivo, who have basically dominated that price the value for money mid-range smartphone category.