HTC U12 Life Launched: 6-inch Mid-Range with Two-Tone
by Ian Cutress on August 30, 2018 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Trade Shows
- Snapdragon 636
- U12+
- IFA 2018
- U12 Life
In a raft of smartphone announcements at IFA 2018, next on the list is from HTC with the U12 Life. The U12 Life is the more mid-range version of the U12 family, which also contains the U12+ that was announced in May. The new smartphone still goes big with a 6-inch 2160x1080 display, with an 18:9 aspect ratio, and no notch as smartphones used to be.
At the heart of the U12 Life is the Snapdragon 636, with eight Kryo 260 cores and an Adreno 509 GPU, placing it firmly in the mid-range. This follows through with the cameras, upgraded from the U11 Life with a dual rear camera (16MP + 5MP, f/2.0) and a front camera (13MP f/2.0). HTC has put a focus on selfies here, offering a front camera LED flash.
Other features of the smartphone include 4GB of DRAM, 64GB of UFS 2.1 storage, and an expandable microSD slot. The fingerprint sensor is on the rear, which comes with the textured glass back on the bottom half of the smartphone for a two-tone effect – HTC calls this a dual-tone liquid surface. The battery is rated at 3600 mAh, with up to 10W charging, and will be offered in two colors: Moonlight Blue and Twilight Purple.
The phone supports dual nano-SIMs with dual LTE, and has both a 3.5 mm audio jack and USB Type-C connection. The modem inside is good up to Cat 11, or 600 Mbps download. Other wireless connectivity comes via an 802.11ac module with NFC and Bluetooth 5.0.
Pricing for the Life should be around 350 Euro, launching in EMEA later next month. We'll try and get a hands on while we're here at IFA.
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SigmundEXactos - Thursday, August 30, 2018 - link
Except for maybe being a little too big, this is perfect -- no notch, headphone jack, expandable storage. But why isn't this coming to the US??? :(V900 - Thursday, August 30, 2018 - link
“The notch” is one of the most ridiculous trends in the industry ever.Especially since, unlike in the case of the iPhone X, there’s no practical reason for it at all.
Peskarik - Thursday, August 30, 2018 - link
I have HTC10 that I like a lot.U12 Life would be nice, but why Adreno 509?
1_rick - Thursday, August 30, 2018 - link
Probably because it's good enough for most purposes.webdoctors - Thursday, August 30, 2018 - link
US market is tricky. Not only do you have the various bands and CDMA to contend with, but also the pricing model with subscription subsidies from the major carriers.Ignorant consumers think they're getting telecom phones for free and will balk at paying MSRP for a phone without the Apple logo. BYOD pricing hasn't taken off yet.
darkswordsman17 - Thursday, August 30, 2018 - link
You're pretty out of date (like years, think its already been 3 or 4 since they ditched that) on the pricing model for the US, they don't really do subsidies any more. You can get on payment plans where you pay the phones off in incremental payments per month, but that very much is not "free" or even touted as such (the only time would be situations like buy 1 get 1 free, where you get two phones, both billed to your plan but then getting credited for the cost of one of them each month).CDMA is still somewhat of a hassle, as is band support (which isn't a hardware issue as most phones are capable of supporting them, but rather that if you get a device from one of the carriers it can be a hassle to get them to unlock it such that you get the software of the phone to enable all the bands for whichever network you switch to). The best solution if you switch carriers much is to get a Verizon phone, as it'll support CDMA and also GSM, and I believe Verizon still leaves the LTE unlocked so you don't even have to request them to unlock it to use with another carrier. You have to be careful about buying "unlocked" phones from the factory because there can be two versions, one for GSM and one for CDMA. Plus unlocked phones seems to have worse software update for Android for some reason.
slotplayer68 - Thursday, May 6, 2021 - link
I use this phone as a backup social phone, its good for that and its got quite <a href="https://slotfreespin.com"> free slots</a>mileranda - Thursday, October 28, 2021 - link
I had this phone, it worked relatively quickly for the first few months. Then everything began to lag, very slow animations etc.. I was even afraid to go to my blog https://ulive.chat/es/p, as it is impossible to post a post or read comments there — it was extremely slow. In general, as the main phone, it definitely cannot be used.