HTC U23 Pro Review: Power isn’t everything

Verdict

The HTC U23 Professional is as clean an expertise as it’s massive, providing a premium smartphone expertise at a decent value. It’s nonetheless crushed by power-focused telephones just like the Poco F5, nevertheless it’s a much more convincing full package deal.

Introduction

Releasing at £499/$499, the HTC U23 Professional doesn’t let a complete lot on with its identify. What any of which means is really a thriller. However what isn’t a thriller is how and why I’ve come to adore it after spending a stable week lugging it round on a motorcycle, to the park, and round a purchasing centre.

The espresso black design, which you’ll solely actually discover when shining the rear underneath a shiny gentle, isn’t the explanation. I a lot want my handsets to sport a little bit of color. However its intensive digital camera cluster, attractive and huge OLED show, and snappy efficiency come as a pleasing shock.

It’s not the quickest you will get for the cash with the Poco F5 kicking round, and the battery isn’t the most effective even with out an always-on show, nevertheless it manages to strike a convincing compromise within the mid-range smartphone market. 

Design

• Muted and fundamental outward look
• Giant footprint with slim high and backside bezels
• Fairly heavy for a plastic chassis

Sporting an all-plastic design, the HTC U23 Professional isn’t actually a lot of a looker when it’s flipped on its face. The branding is minimal, and the rear casing isn’t making an attempt to tug off any glittery gradients or loopy visible aptitude. 

As a substitute, it’s a muted and matt darkish brown end that appears good if nothing else. If that’s not your cup of tea (or ought to that be espresso?), there’s additionally a silver-and-white Snow White end obtainable.

With somewhat little bit of give when pushed down, you is likely to be mistaken to suppose it’s a traditional detachable cowl with a swappable battery. Giving it a faucet along with your finger will elicit reminiscences of older HTC gadgets or one thing like Samsung Galaxy S2 if you happen to’ve been poking round with this stuff for lengthy. A plastic end will do this.

What would possibly catch your eye, nonetheless, is the digital camera cluster positioned proper the place you’d count on it. A cavalcade of sensors isn’t fully stunning in at the moment’s smartphone market, however paired with its darkish environment, the entire look is a bit more spider-like than most.

Transferring on from the bottom for a second, the outer edges of the machine home not solely a fingerprint reader underneath the ability button, however the nonetheless dearly missed headphone jack. It’s alive and properly on high of the machine, with a second microphone beside it not too removed from the one properly positioned proper by the cameras.

The entire package deal, regardless of being plastic to the most effective of my data, is surprisingly heavy at 205g. Not unwieldy by any stretch, however its massive footprint lends itself to a heft that’s not too far off Apple’s greatest (and vastly dearer) smartphones regardless of their glass and steel development. A minimum of there’s respectable IP67 water resistance to steadiness that out. 

Display screen

• 120Hz OLED panel
• Shiny and crisp
• Fantastic distinction

The primary attract of the HTC U23 Professional must be its massive, daring, and delightful 6.7-inch OLED show.

Because of Google’s already easy summary and punchy app icons, I nonetheless generally unlock the display screen simply to see the pop of color emitted by the brilliant panel. Is it somewhat harsh subsequent to my typical iPhone 13 Professional Max? Certain. However for no matter purpose, I simply can’t get sufficient of it.

Even higher than the blinding brights of the show is its 120Hz refresh price. Seemingly the trigger for among the battery woes we’ll get into quickly, it’s a near-essential part of a contemporary smartphone for my part, serving to the highly effective ones stretch their legs, and the much less succesful really feel quicker than they really are.

Elsewhere, at 2400×1080 (393 pixels per inch), it’s an awesome display screen that’s completely suited to video games, video, and common looking. Although it closes the hole on the longer edges with slim bezels, you’ll be aware a slight chin and brow, with the latter maintaining a large earpiece in full view. 

They’re not massive sufficient to treat as snug off-screen grips, however I’m not speaking edgeless show tech right here.

Cameras

• Extensive, ultrawide, and macro lenses
• Devoted depth sensor
• 13MP selfie digital camera

Don’t mistake the HTC U23 Professional as having 4 large sensors on the again. You’ve got a typical 108MP snapper, an 8MP ultrawide possibility for sweeping vistas or group pictures, and a 5MP macro lens for detailed product, flora, and texture photographs. That fourth ring, nonetheless, is nothing however a 2MP depth sensor.

Whichever lens you select to benefit from, you’re positive to get pictures with stable color copy and loads of element. Inside pictures lacked somewhat heat, with darkish corners shedding element, nevertheless it’s nothing some gentle on-device modifying can’t repair. 

Out within the backyard on a shiny and sunny summer season’s day, the sensors had no concern highlighting the distinction in color between a row of vivid plant pots, the macro lens managed to make sense of the fruits and blooms, and video managed to maintain up with different lighting situations, however even with OIS, stabilisation was poor as I tip-toed round my backyard.

For heavy use and filling up your storage shortly, the underside slider of the Digicam app can be utilized to enter Professional mode with a number of handbook management, and the 108MP mode. Sure, the complete vary of the sensor isn’t set at a base stage. 

You’ll need to manually choose it every time. It’s a superb possibility for letting in plenty of element for reframing, reusing, and cropping down the road, however given it’s locked to 1x zoom and may’t be used together with portrait, night time mode or virtually another tweaks, its makes use of are restricted. Appreciated, however restricted.

For the selfie and video name fiends on the market, you’ll discover heaps to like with the 32MP front-facing digital camera. There are even some built-in beautifying options to spice up your eyes or slim your cheeks if you happen to’re into that on-the-fly synthetic fiddling. 

Efficiency

• Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 SoC
• 12GB RAM
• Mid-range gaming efficiency

Wherever you look, you’ll see solely the 12GB/256GB model of the HTC U23 Professional. There are murmurs of an 8GB model on-line which, just like the non-Professional mannequin, is likely to be unique to pick out areas in the meanwhile. 

Both means, it’s a heck of plenty of reminiscence for a smartphone at this value: not utterly out of the strange, however a considerably sudden growth. Paired with the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 processor, the HTC U23 Professional is a silky clean machine in day-to-day operation.

Placing the 120Hz panel to nice use, scrolling internet pages and altering apps appears improbable, with the naturally lighting-fast pixel response occasions of OLED know-how solely serving to it additional. In virtually each state of affairs sans gaming, HTC’s mid-ranger feels nice to toy round with.

Due to that processor, nonetheless, gaming is the place it might probably fall ever so brief. The overwhelming majority of titles will sing, with aggressive MOBAs like Pokemon Unite and League of Legends: Wild Rift taking part in simply tremendous. The massive display screen additionally helps preserve your thumbs from masking up an excessive amount of of that obligatory in-game info.

With a few of at the moment’s extra graphically intensive adventures like Genshin Affect and Honkai: Star Rail, nonetheless, you gained’t be capable of max out the attention sweet with out tanking the body price. 

There’s a stage of private choice to take care of there, however with devoted gaming handsets just like the Poco F5 stepping issues up with the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2 for even much less cash, it’s not the most effective value to efficiency handset on the market if gaming is your core focus. It’s definitely a greater all-rounded than both of these, however the competitors is shut.

Apart from a delicate contact display screen throughout calls and in your pocket you’ll wish to watch out with, it’s an awesome handset that’s suited to just about everybody. Simply don’t go away the quantity up: the notification sound is each egregious to your eyes and to the telephone’s in any other case respectable loudspeakers. It could actually get somewhat toasty underneath load, however not sufficient to concern your self with.

Software program

• Android 13
• Restricted third-party bloat
• Unintrusive first-party metaverse efforts

There isn’t a large quantity out of the strange with the HTC U23 Professional past the VIVERSE apps HTC baked right into a neatly hidden folder on the house display screen. 

If, like myself, you understand the VIVE branding as the unique VR headset Valve bought by way of its Steam retailer, you would possibly wrestle to actually recognise what it stands for now that HTC is out by itself with its digital actuality endeavours. With out going too in-depth, it’s primarily an ecosystem of apps designed across the concept of the metaverse: avatars, crypto cash— that kind of factor.

As disappointing because it is likely to be to listen to, at no level did the telephone attempt to thrust its grifting efforts down my throat. When you skip away from it in the course of the preliminary setup, you gained’t hear from it once more. Simply uninstall the apps and be finished with all of it. 

Past all that, it’s a comparatively inventory Android 13 expertise powered completely properly by the telephone’s Snapdragon chip. There was a difficulty with a persistent notification claiming to be receiving incoming messages that simply wouldn’t go away, which did get somewhat annoying. However apart from that and a few very irritatingly loud notification chimes, the Android expertise was stable.

If there’s one factor I’d prefer to see, it could be a extra aggressive contact rejection possibility someplace within the settings. In my brief week with the machine, I used to be pressured into utilizing the PIN unlock methodology over both biometric possibility. Apparently both grabbing the machine or trying it its common route had triggered the unlock failsafe. And this wasn’t a one-off.

Equally, answering a telephone name posed loads of issues with the display screen not turning off when the telephone was towards my ear, inflicting every kind of points as my pores and skin and hair caressed the still-active touchscreen throughout my chat. They’re all points not unique to the HTC U23 Professional, however boy did it irritate me to see that it’s nonetheless a difficulty in 2023.

Battery life

• 4600mAh battery
• 30W wired charging
• Wi-fi charging

At simply 4600mAh, the battery capability of the HTC U23 Professional is much from excellent. It looks like there’s somewhat an excessive amount of expectation on the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 to preserve energy right here.

Don’t get me improper; you’ll simply get a complete day trip of the handset: it’s simply all the time the hope to see one comfortably stroll right into a second day with out completely demanding a cost each night time. 

Generally each day use which, to me, is round an hour of gaming, plenty of Twitter, Discord, Slack, and emails, and loads of photographs of my pets, a full cost isn’t going to wish frantically topping up at lunch to see you dwelling. 

And if you happen to do occur to be snug along with your battery share, the reverse charging characteristic will allow you to share among the juice with one other related machine: like a pal’s telephone. That one even works wirelessly on appropriate gadgets.

In our typical assessments, a extremely detailed sport like Honkai: Star Rail sapped 9% of the battery in simply half-hour. Once more, that outcome isn’t completely out of the blue, nevertheless it’s sufficient to doubtlessly land you in sizzling water if you happen to’re ever with out an outlet for a day.

Watching an hour of Netflix, however, sapped one complete share level lower than the aforementioned turn-based RPG. That’s a snug viewing expertise seemingly afforded not solely by the comparatively tame effort of taking part in again video versus rendering stay content material, however by the adaptive refresh price that drops to 60Hz when watching video content material.

Sadly, your battery woes start proper out of the field, as a result of it doesn’t embody a charger. Able to accepting 30W by way of USB-C, you may juice up quickly, going from 0-55% in slightly below half an hour. That battery-sapping gaming session immediately doesn’t sound all too unhealthy an concept. 

To achieve 100% outdoors of an intensive trickle cost, you’re a 78-minute plug-in session. Wi-fi charging will take longer, nevertheless it’s all the time a pleasant choice to have.

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FAQs

Is there a headphone jack?

Sure, there’s a headphone jack on the highest finish of the machine.

Is it dual-SIM?

The MicroSD slot can take a second SIM if you happen to don’t want to make use of a reminiscence card.

Is it water-proof?

Regardless of the headphone jack and different seen openings, the HTC U23 Professional is IP67-rated for mud and water resistance.

Does it help wi-fi charging?

Sure, the HTC U23 Professional helps not solely wi-fi charging, however reverse wi-fi and wired charging.