In 2014, HTC had launched the One M8 smartphone with Duo Camera feature. The rear panel of the phone featured a dual camera setup that included a main UltraPixel camera of 4-megapixel along with a secondary depth sensor. It was the world’s first smartphone ever to feature a dual camera that could shoot depth information. The following flagship phones from the Taiwanese company have featured single cameras. After the launch of HTC U11+ phone in Taipei, Chialin Chang who is President of the company has confirmed that it will re-enter the dual camera smartphone market in the next year.
“We’ll definitely be releasing a dual-camera phone next year, but we’ll need to figure out how to make this feature stand out,” said Chang. The Taiwanese company has recently focused more on improving the camera experience on its new flagships. Hence, the HTC U11 that was launched in May this year managed to record an impressive score of 90 on mobile camera benchmarking platform, DxOMark. The newly unveiled HTC U11+ features an improved version of the same of U11 Plus camera.
Flagship phones from Huawei and Essential feature monochrome sensor as secondary camera lens. Samsung and Apple are using wide telephoto along with the primary camera. LG is making use of a wide-angle lens to assist the main sensor. There is no information on the dual camera configuration that the Taiwanese company will adopt on its 2018 flagship phone. If company decides to use the same dual camera system that was made available on HTC One M8, the 2018 flagship phone from the company may feature secondary telephoto lens.
Chang has also confirmed that HTC will be releasing around five to six smartphones in 2018 like it did this year. Instead of just releasing high-end phones, the company also plans to take on the 2,000 Yuan smartphone market in China in 2018. He added the acquisition of HTC’s Pixel team by Google is in process and the deal may close in early 2018.
Fresh information suggests that HTC was supposed to make the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones. However, since the latter was cancelled by Google, the Taiwanese company redesigned its iteration of Pixel 2 XL to launch it as U11+. When Chang was asked whether the HTC U11+ is the cancelled Pixel 2 XL he replied by saying that he does not know how to answer the question. He said that because of the relationship between HTC and Google, he can’t comment on Google’s products.
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He commented on the HTC U11+ by saying that, “we actually started planning it as such around end of last year, like the way we sourced its key components and whether they made sense, it was planned that way at the time. We are also very happy that our U11+ used these parts.”
After the HTC One Max from 2013, the U11+ is the first phone from the company to feature rear-facing fingerprint reader. This is another indication that the phone U11+ may have been original planned to debut as Pixel 2 XL. According to Chang, the positioning of the fingerprint reader on the rear panel seems more sensible on the U11+ as it features an elongated 18:9 display. He added that if HTC had really built the two similarly specced phones, it could have used the same rear positioning of the fingerprint scanner on both devices.
(source)
