After teasing its new phone on Twitter, HTC has officially taken the wraps off the U23 Pro smartphone, which looks exactly to the leaked images that the leaker bought from a used marketplace in China, and unfortunately, the HTC U23 Pro is neither a flagship grade smartphone nor does it have much to do with the Metaverse.
The phone has a pretty generic design that seems to be taken from OPPO, it comes in color options of Coffee Black and Snow White, while you also get a thick chin bezel and a front camera punch hole cut out, which isn’t some kind of design language you would have hoped the old HTC adopt on its flagship smartphones, though to give them some credit, the U23 pro is IP67 rated against dust and water.
In terms of specs, the phone is powered by last year’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 SoC paired with 12GB RAM and 256GB of storage, the latter can be expanded with a microSD card, it features a 6.7-inch OLED FHD+ display that refreshes at 120Hz and protected by Gorilla Glass Victus, 4,600mAh battery with support for 30W fast wired charging and 15W wireless charging.
Camera wise, it has a quad camera system that features a 108MP main camera with OIS and EIS that takes 4K HDR videos, complemented by an 8MP ultrawide, 5MP macro and 2MP depth camera, the front camera takes 32MP stills and 1080p videos, which is overall a pretty standard camera setup we have seen on mid-range phones.
So, how is the phone related to the company’s Viverse platform?
Well, aside from being able to create your own digital avatar on the phone, you can stream apps from the phone into the company’s VIVE XR Elite headset, and that unfortunately needs to be purchased separately as it doesn’t come with the phone, but thankfully this isn’t another smartphone VR headset idea that HTC is introducing here, so if you already own the VIVR XR Elite headset, this could be a good companion phone to go with.
Don’t expect the HTC U23 pro to be sold in Malaysia, as the company’s smartphone division has exited the market here, the phone can be preordered at the HTC Vive UK online shop for a cool £499.00 (RM2813) and you get a free HTC True Wireless Buds Plus earbuds.
Though this isn’t exactly a great comeback by HTC, let’s hope HTC really takes it smartphones a little more seriously the next round.
