HTC puts 3.5mm jack back in successor U11 Life smartphone

HTC has presented the U12 Life smartphone. It is a midrange smartphone with 6″ LCD and dual camera on the back. Unlike its predecessor, the U12 Life does have a 3.5mm jack for headsets.

The U12 Life is the second smartphone in the U12 series, after the U12+ that came out a few months ago. The device has a 6″ LCD with a resolution of 2160×1080 pixels. The phone of 158x75x8.3 mm has a glass back with a pattern on part of the housing. Despite the presence of glass, HTC does not say anything about the presence of wireless charging. The battery has a capacity of 3600mAh.

The device runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 636-soc, with eight Kryo processor cores at a maximum of 1.8GHz and an Adreno 509 GPU. HTC adds 4GB of lpddr3 memory, while the ufs storage is 64GB. Users can expand that with an SD card. The phone has a USB-C port for charging. The device runs on Android 8.1 Oreo, but unlike its predecessor, that is not Android One.

Where the U11 Life and almost all other midrange or high-end HTC smartphones from recent years do not have a 3.5 mm jack, the U12 Life does have the analog audio port. It is the first time that a manufacturer has provided a direct successor to a telephone without a 3.5 mm connection with the connection in recent years. The manufacturer does not say anything about whether future phones will also have the connection again.

The primary camera has a 1/2.8″ sensor with a maximum resolution of sixteen megapixels and a lens with f/2.0 aperture. The secondary sensor is only there for estimating depth and is a small 1/5″ sensor with a resolution of five megapixels. HTC will release the phone in October for a suggested retail price of 349 euros.