HTC Desire 12 Plus

HTC's low-cost Desire series has been resurrected this year with the Desire 12 and Desire 12 Plus, and both phones continue the proud tradition of offering solid specs at a lower-than-average price point, all wrapped up in a gorgeous design that wouldn't look out of place in the coveted flagship sector of the market.

With an able Snapdragon 450 chipset, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and a roomy 6-inch display, the Desire 12 Plus has what it takes to impress on paper, especially at the £199 (around $265, AU$350) price point.

However, there are rival phones which offer even better specs for around the same price (or less) which means you're essentially paying for HTC's software and design skills more than anything else – both of which are admittedly above-average.

Design

• Lightweight and appealing design
• Acrylic bodywork is a fingerprint magnet
• No water or dust protection

Looking at the HTC Desire 12 Plus when it's lying flat on a table, you'd swear that it was constructed from glass, like a great many leading smartphones these days. 

However, the moment you scoop it up it's obvious this is a budget device with premium aspirations.

The glossy rear is in fact fashioned from acrylic, which makes the phone feel light (it weighs just 157.5 grams) and slightly low-rent; however, it's just as much a magnet for fingerprints as a glass-backed device.

As the 'Plus' in the name suggests, this is what you might unkindly refer to as a 'phablet' in terms of size. It measures 158.2 x 76.6 x 8.4mm, but thanks to its modest weight and svelte profile it never feels too big during use.

The rounded edges make it easy to grip, but that acrylic rear panel can get slippery, so some kind of case might be a good idea. While we're on the topic of ruggedness (or lack thereof), it's worth noting that there's no water or dust protection of any kind.

The rear of the Desire 12 Plus is home to the fast and accurate fingerprint scanner, located just where your finger rests during normal use. Below this is a very subtle HTC logo, and above – in the top-left corner – there's the dual camera setup, along with an LED flash. Next to this is a single noise-cancelling microphone.

Flip the handset over and you'll find the front is dominated by the 6-inch IPS LCD screen, which offers an in-fashion 18:9 aspect ratio. 

There are bezels at the top and bottom, but they're only marginally larger than those seen on the similarly-proportioned Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus.

The 2.5D glass allows for a slight curve around the edge of the display where it meets the main body of the phone, which further accentuates those pleasantly rounded corners. 

The only negative to the design is that you can feel where the front and back panels 'join' with the plastic chassis of the phone; in an age of unibody handsets, this is more jarring than it perhaps should be.

The top of the HTC Desire 12 Plus is totally blank, while the bottom edge fits in the 3.5mm headphone socket, mono speaker, in-call mic and micro USB port – the latter being something of a disappointment, as most major Android phone makers have moved on to USB Type-C now.

On the left edge there's the dual SIM tray (which can also be used to insert a microSD card to expand your available storage) and on the right you'll find the power button and volume rocker. The former is made of textured metal, while the latter is plastic.

Display

• 6-inch IPS LCD screen with an HD+ resolution of 720 x 1440
• 18:9 aspect ratio is perfect for movies

The Desire 12 Plus’s 6-inch IPS LCD screen gives plenty of real estate for watching movies, playing games and browsing the web. It boasts a resolution of 720 x 1440, which in turn delivers a pixel density of around 268 pixels per inch. 

Given that some budget phones around this price point have 1080p screens, it's a little underwhelming.

As the market becomes increasingly saturated with OLED-equipped phones, those with IPS panels have trouble standing out from the crowd. 

That's the case with the Desire 12 Plus, too; while it's refreshingly clear with solid viewing angles, it looks noticeably dull when compared to the latest OLED screens seen on other handsets and brightness is lacking.

Still, colors look natural enough and contrast is decent, and HTC has even included a color temperature option in the settings, so you configure the display to your own personal taste.

The 18:9 aspect ratio brings the Desire 12 Plus in line with 2018's Android flagships, and makes consuming media content on the phone a real pleasure – although it's worth noting that there are still quite a few Android apps which haven't been adapted to fit tall and long displays.

Battery life

• 2,965mAh battery last a day on a single charge
• No fast or wireless charge support

For a phone with such a large display a battery of 2,965mAh doesn't sound like much, but the low resolution of the screen and the improved battery optimization of the Snapdragon 450 chipset really help to extract as much usage out of a single charge as possible.

In our standard battery test – which involves playing a 90-minute 720p video with brightness turned up to maximum – the Desire 12 Plus lost 25% of its battery life. 

That's not great but nor is it bad going for a phone with a 6-inch screen, and in a typical day we found there was always a bit of juice left in the tank by the time we got to bedtime.

Sadly, there's no fast charging support so you may want to get into the habit of leaving the device plugged into a wall socket overnight.

In the time it takes phones with larger batteries and quick-charge support to fully replenish their power (about an hour and a half, give or take), you'll reach around 70% on the Desire 12 Plus. Needless to say, there's no wireless charging.

Camera

• Dual 13MP + 2MP cameras on the rear, with LED flash
• 8MP selfie cam
• 'Bokeh' effects are excellent

While Google seems content with using a single camera on its flagship Pixel 2 phones, dual-camera setups are very much the norm in 2018, and the Desire 12 Plus is no exception.

However, while it's common to see phones sporting two or even three cameras, the way in which each device makes use of them is very different. In the case of the Desire 12 Plus, that second 2MP snapper is utilized solely for depth information and does not act like a telephoto ‘zoom’ camera.

This sensor is instead used in the phone's 'Bokeh' mode, where it judges depth and allows the device to apply a realistic blur effect on the background. Multiple focal point capture is also possible, so you can adjust the areas of focus at a later date.

It's one of the most convincing uses of a dual-camera system we've seen in this sector of the market, but the whole process is hamstrung by the camera's sluggish shutter speed.

Even when you're shooting in near-perfect conditions the Desire 12 Plus can prove to be frustratingly slow when it comes to locking on and snapping a shot, which often means you're left with a blurry image. 

As is to be expected on a low-cost device, there's no optical image stabilization, so you have to keep your hands really still to get a decent image.

When shooting in dark environments, photos exhibit low levels of noise, but the Desire 12 Plus takes what feels like an eternity to focus and capture the shot. With so many handsets offering solutions to low light photography it's a real disappointment to see HTC's phone struggle in this area.

On the plus side, colors look realistic and there's a high level of detail without too much compression. Photos rarely come out overexposed, and everything has a pleasing sense of vibrancy.

The HDR mode makes your shots even more striking, but it slows down the already sluggish shutter speed even more, so it's best left for those times when you're supremely confident of getting the perfect snap.

For those of you who like to dig into the settings to capture the perfect photo, you may find the Desire 12 Plus's camera app to be a little too simplistic. While you can adjust things like ISO and white balance, there's no true 'manual' mode.

In terms of video, it's possible to shoot 1080p footage at 30fps but there's no 4K mode – something that even budget phones like those produced by Xiaomi manage to include. There are hardly any video features to speak of, so don't expect to find screen filters or fancy slo-mo effects, like those seen on the Samsung Galaxy S9.

Camera samples

Interface and software

• Runs Android Oreo
• HTC's Sense UI is bloat-free

Like a great many Android devices in 2018, the Desire 12 Plus is running Oreo out of the box, but it comes with HTC's own UI skin sitting on top. Mercifully, it's a very light skin with minimal changes and almost no bloatware to speak of; HTC has even sensibly opted to avoid duplicating features which already exist within Google's own app ecosystem.

The two areas where HTC tries to set itself apart are BlinkFeed – which sits to the left of your main home screen and works very much like Google's own ‘Now’ app by pulling together a news feed which showcases posts from your social media, the latest weather reports and much more besides – and Sense Companion.

Sense Companion is HTC's take on the AI assistant craze which is currently sweeping the world of smartphones, and like Siri, Bixby, Google Assistant and Alexa, it tries to make your everyday digital life that little bit easier.

It uses data like your location, the time and day and basic usage patterns to offer helpful suggestions with the objective of streamlining your daily grind.

It will, like Google's AI companion, pick up on nearby points of interest, but it offers other cool features like being able to tell you if your battery won't last until your next calendar appointment, or if going for a run is advisable given the current weather.

In a neat touch, a small Sense Companion icon 'bubble' appears on the left edge of the screen when it has a suggestion, which is delightfully non-obtrusive.

You can, of course, simply use Google Assistant instead, and to be honest it's probably a more mature and feature-rich option when compared to Sense Companion.

While HTC has some neat ideas and the way in which the software 'blends' with the UI is commendable, we can't help but wish handset makers would simply do a better job of integrating Google's superior option rather than spending all this time and effort making something that simply isn't as capable.

Performance-wise, moving around the UI is a smooth affair, and apps load quickly. Switching between active applications is a breeze too, but there are brief moments of lag when the phone is performing several different tasks in tandem.

Movies, music and gaming

• 18:9 widescreen display is great for movies and gaming
• Mono speaker is loud but too easy to muffle
• 32GB of storage, but only 22GB is available to the end user

That large 6-inch screen is ideal for watching movies, although the low resolution does mean that things can look somewhat ill-defined at times. The lack of brightness also means that you'll want to restrict your cinematic pursuits to darkened environments. Despite these minor shortcomings, the 18:9 aspect ratio screen performs admirably.

The audio side of things isn't quite as impressive, however. While the mono speaker is loud and doesn't exhibit any distortion at high volumes, its position on the bottom edge of the phone means it's far too easy to accidentally cover with your hand during use.

We'd also have preferred a stereo speaker setup, like that seen on the much pricier HTC U12 Plus. Thankfully the phone comes with a 3.5mm headphone socket, so you can use a pair of wired headphones when you're binging on Netflix.

With just 32GB of storage – of which around 22GB is available to the end user once essential downloads are taken into account – the Desire 12 Plus isn't blessed with loads of space for music, movies and games.

It's a bonus then that the second SIM card slot can be used to insert a microSD card of up to 2TB in capacity. If you intend to download a lot of media to your phone – and you don't intend to use two SIMs – then you'll almost certainly want to pick up a large card.

3D gaming is an excellent way of testing the performance of any smartphone, and the Desire 12 Plus handles these well enough. The phone's relatively low resolution screen helps take pressure off the CPU and GPU, but really intense titles still stutter slightly when the action hots up. More basic 2D games run smoothly, however.

Specs and benchmark performance

• Snapdragon 450 with 3GB of RAM
• Acceptable performance with occasional pauses
• No NFC support, or 5GHz Wi-Fi

The Desire range has always been about offering good performance at a mid-range cost, and this new model is no different. Beating at its heart is the Snapdragon 450 chipset, which isn't Qualcomm's cutting-edge silicon but is more than capable of handling the stresses of modern smartphone use.

It has been designed with a focus on dual-camera effects and battery management optimization, and is paired with 3GB of RAM.

In benchmark tests, the Desire 12 Plus is in roughly the same ballpark as phones like the Nokia 6 (2018), Honor 7X and Honor 9 Lite. In Geekbench, the Desire 12 Plus scores 3,758 in the multi-core benchmark, which is a similar score to those posted by other 2018 budget challengers.

There are some pretty significant omissions in the spec sheet for the Desire 12 Plus, though. There's no NFC support, which means you can't use the phone to make mobile payments with Google Pay. The lack of 5GHz Wi-Fi band support is also slightly disappointing.

Verdict

In keeping with its ancestors, the HTC Desire 12 Plus offers good performance on a budget, but there's nothing truly awe-inspiring here. The screen is 720p, the chipset is workmanlike rather than blazing fast and the camera setup can often be frustrating to use due to its slow shutter speed.

However, when you're paying less than £200 (around $265 / AU$350) for a smartphone in 2018, you have to expect these shortcomings. On the plus side, the phone looks attractive even if it doesn't use premium materials, battery life is decent and the ability to add more storage via microSD cards is welcome.

HTC's approach to Android is also a breath of fresh air, as it hasn't pre-installed loads of annoying bloatware and it wisely chooses to avoid duplicating services that Google already offers.

Who's this for?

HTC's standing in the mobile industry may have flagged in recent years but the company still has a reputation for quality, and if you've been happy with HTC handsets in the past then there's little reason why you'd feel let down by the Desire 12 Plus.

It offers a big-screen experience on a budget and – when it works – can capture some really striking 'Bokeh' effect images with its dual-camera setup. Combine this with a stylish design and a bloat-free UI, and you've got the perfect phone for youngsters or those who simply want a device for smartphone basics.

Those sticking to a tight budget will also find it a solid purchase, but it's worth being aware that there are more powerful and capable Android phones on the market for roughly the same price.

Should you buy it?

If you're only really bothered about having a phone which has acceptable stamina, a big screen and doesn't look cheap and nasty, then you'll be as pleased as punch with the Desire 12 Plus.

However, if you're keen to get as much value for money as possible and value things like a nippy camera and a Full HD display, then you'd be better off looking elsewhere, or perhaps putting a little more money towards getting a more capable phone.

The HTC Desire 12 Plus is a good phone for the money, but the following handsets are decent alternatives.

Honor 9 Lite

This cheap and cheerful handset is perfect for casual mobile users, and boasts a decent camera and an eye-catching design. Its biggest shortcoming is the rather overbearing custom UI.

• Read our full Honor 9 Lite review

Nokia 6 (2017)

This budget blower has stock Android, strong photography skills, a great design and better speakers than the HTC Desire 12 Plus, but suffers when it comes to battery life.

• Read our full Nokia 6 (2017) review

Moto G5 Plus

The Moto G range is seen by many as the king of the budget Android sector, and you can see why with the Moto G5 Plus, as it has a premium build and good specs that make it hard to resist, but the camera is slightly underwhelming.

• Read our full Moto G5 Plus review

First reviewed: July 2018