HCT U12+ Has Real Quality Problems

In past years HTC’s smartphone business didn’t perform ideally. It can be captured from its global market share, regular financial data, and so on. Although Wang Xuehong believes that 5G and VR will be opportunities for HTC smartphones in the future, there are some quality problems the company should pay attention to.

A YouTube blogger, ‘Red JerryRigEverthing’ with more than 2 million fans is known for the three cruel tests of mainstream smartphones, namely, knife cutting (mainly examining the body material of the mobile phone), burning (screen quality), and force (body’s structural firmness).

The former flagship in face of the HTC U11 was considered as non-resistant because there is no design buffer between the middle frame metal and the screen glass. It’s been thought the manufacturer will fix those shortcomings for the new model. Jerry started his test on June 30. It’s been done for the HTC U12+. He found out the manufacturer has added a ‘buffer zone.’

However, in addition to the fire screen passing (pixels turned dark after 10 seconds, but at the end, they successfully recovered), some problems occurred in both the knife cutting and bending tests. First, look at the knife cut. The double-sided Gorilla 5 generation glass can withstand the sharpness of the 6 Mohs hardness (or less). As a reminder, the middle frame is made of metal.

Unfortunately, the right button couldn’t resist and it was actually cut off by the knife. Thus, the volume key and the power button are directly flattened. At the same time, the screen brightness adjustment and the volume adjustment are out of order.

In the bend test, Jerry found that the structural strength of the front glass was higher than that of the back, resulting in significant deformation (no cracking) when the screen was forced down. Subsequently, the rear shell and the middle frame of the HCT U12+ have been opened from the vicinity of the force point. Then the rear shell can be easily removed. As Jerry said, the IP68 dustproof and waterproof function instantly ‘disintegrated.’