Tag: HTC

HTC has pulled back the covers on their latest flagship device, the HTC U12+.  The first phone from the Taiwanese company for 2018 has all the specs you would expect from a flagship phone and has the price to go along with it.

Powering the U12+ is the 2.8GHz Snapdragon 845 SoC which is a 64-bit, octa-core architecture.  This is coupled with 6GB of RAM and either 64GB or 128GB of onboard storage.  That storage can be expanded thanks to the MicroSD slot.  Display wise, you have a 6″ QHD LCD display which renders at 2880×1440.  It provides an eye-popping 537ppi on the 18:9 ratio display.  All this comes in a phone that is 156.6 x 73.9 x 8.7-9.7mm and weighs 188g.

HTC Vice President of Product Management, Mo Versi, has once again taken to Twitter to announced a new update for one of the company’s phones.  This time it is for the HTC 10 for customers of Sprint here in the United States.

Sprint HTC 10 customers! We have received the Oreo OS approval from the carrier! OTA to start from tomorrow. Thanks!

— Mo Versi (@moversi) February 12, 2018

The release of Oreo on the Sprint variant of the HTC 10 comes literally a month to the day after the build was released for the unlocked variant of the 2016 flagship phone.  That update just over 1.5GB in size so those of you who have the 10 on Sprint, you can expect a similarly sized update for your phone.

After virtually all of the details about the device were leaked last week, including on HTC’s own site over the weekend, the Taiwanese company has made the new HTC U11 EYEs mid-range phone official.  Priced at roughly $500 US, the phone is now available for pre-order within Taiwan with it remaining unclear what future expansion globally the U11 EYEs will see.

As for the phone itself, it looks very similar to the flagship U11 device from HTC.  Constructed of aluminum and glass, the U11 EYEs is powered by the Snapdragon 652 SoC and is coupled with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.  That storage can be expanded up to 2TB thanks to the MicroSD/second SIM tray in the phone.  Display wise, it has a 6″ FullHD Super LCD 3 display that renders at 2160 x 1080, giving a comfortable ~402 ppi.  It also has Edge Sense like the other U11 phones, giving you the ability to squeeze the edge of the phone to perform certain tasks.

The Android Oreo update for the 2016 HTC flagship phone, the HTC 10, has been released for the unlocked variant.  The update is build 3.16.617.2 for those keeping score at home and it is a hefty 1.5GB download.  You’ll certainly need to download it via WiFi.

The update brings all the goodness of Android Oreo to the HTC 10 with things such as Picture-in-Picture, App Notifications and Notification channels just to name a few things.  The update also represents the last major update to the 10.  It shipped with Android Marshmallow in 2016 and was upgraded to Nougat last year.  Kudos to HTC for offering the upgrade on the two year old phone when many other manufactures don’t do so.

Late yesterday it was announced that Google had signed an agreement with HTC for staff and intellectual property for $1.1 Billion.  The agreement means that, essentially, the HTC staff that have worked on the Google Pixel phones will become Google employees and the Mountain View company will be able to license the Taiwanese company’s IP, non-exclusively.

This is slightly different than what was expected early yesterday when it was assumed that Google would be buying HTC outright.

With this agreement, a team of HTC talent will join Google as part of the hardware organization. These future fellow Googlers are amazing folks we’ve already been working with closely on the Pixel smartphone line, and we’re excited to see what we can do together as one team. The deal also includes a non-exclusive license for HTC intellectual property.

The deal means that HTC will remain in the smartphone business as a manufacture and is expected to release their own flagship early next year.  But as for work with the Mountain View company, it appears that work is over as it is now in-house for the search giant.

A lot of leaks and rumors are suggesting that tomorrow we can expect a big announcement between Google and HTC.  That announcement is expected to be that Google will acquire all or some of HTC.  Bloomberg Gadfly reporter Tim Culpan is reporting that trading of the Taiwanese company will halt trading of their stock tomorrow as part of the “major announcement”.

Rumors of the demise of HTC have been swirling for years as the company has struggled to make a firm foundation for itself in the smartphone space.  While they have had some outstanding phones, they have also had plenty that have simply not performed well both in sales and overall usability.  HTC has built phones for Google in the past and is the company behind the upcoming Google Pixel 2.