The HTC U12+ is 2018’s smartphone camera champ

HTC has gotten a lot of flak for the flagship devices it has been putting out recently. The phones have been extremely thick, HTC’s software hasn’t had a substantial update since 2016 and Edge Sense, the main selling point that HTC’s been pushing, is nothing more than a gimmick. But despite all that, HTC has managed to stay ahead of the competition with its outstanding cameras. The HTC U11 and HTC U11+ were better than almost every other smartphone in 2017 for taking pictures and the new HTC U12+ is by far my favorite smartphone camera of 2018. 32 Amazing photos taken with the Pixel 2 The 12MP sensor setup on the back of the phone isn’t dramatically different from last year’s, but HTC has tweaked its image processing algorithms a bit to deliver better low-light performance, sharpness and white balance. While I’ve praised the Pixel 2 for beating out most other 2018 flagship devices in various photo comparisons, the HTC U12+ is the only device I’ve used which can actually beat Google’s phone. The dual-sensor array on the back of the HTC U12+ gives it the ability to zoom in on faraway subjects, but it also allows the phone to capture portrait-style photos by using the depth information to blur out the background. That same trick can also be done with selfies since the HTC U12+ also has two 8MP camera sensors on the front of the phone. Take a look at the photos I’ve taken with the HTC U12+ over the past two months and let me know what you think. If HTC’s marketing, design and engineering teams performed as well as its camera team, do you think HTC’s would look a lot different than it does?