HTC's smartphone division is not dead yet. Freshly tweeted this morning, we now have a release date for HTC's next major Android release, which is almost certainly the HTC U12 that has already made some early appearances. The images before the launch have suggested that the U12 will not have a notch, marking a break with most Android flagships this year, and The Verge confirmed that this is the case with people familiar with the HTC plans.
The motto of this new flagship of Android is "a phone that is more than the sum of its specifications", hinting at an effort by HTC to distinguish itself in a different way to the usual pursuit of the latest and best components of hardware. Assuming that the exploded view of the components in the preview image shows parts of the next phone, we can reconstruct some of the specifications, such as a dual-camera system for the back and, apparently, another for the front. This agrees with an image obtained by the serial hammer Evan Blass in March. The alleged U12 also seems to contain a tray of cards for the microSD storage expansion, but shows no signs of a headphone jack, which is a feature that HTC abandoned early last year.
It's funny to see HTC persist with its range of smartphones even after selling the majority of its telephony business to Google. On the other hand, phone designs take years to complete and it is reasonable to interpret that this next release (and any other that can be made later this year) is simply the completion of projects that were already in preparation when it was agreed to sell the agreement. to Google. A week after the launch of OnePlus 6, HTC's next flagship will face fierce competition from an Android market that has already been almost completely updated with the 2018 models.