It’s not often that we see a new phone from HTC but here’s one now, the U23 Pro. HTC used to be a giant in the smartphone world but it’s been pretty quiet in recent years. So could the U23 Pro be its big comeback?
Design and Build
The HTC U23 Pro is a phone with the medium-level specs that you’d expect from a mid-ranger. What draws the attention here is the 120hz OLED display, The 108-megapixel camera with OIS, and of course the HTC name. The U23 Pro has a soft and velvety finish with a slight metallic Sheen. It also collects smudges quite easily, it feels sturdy in hand even though rather than more premium materials HTC has gone with plastic hair.
The U23 Pro does bring Ingress Protection rated at IP67 which’s great to have especially in a mid-ranger and you also get an RGB notification LED something all the rage a few years ago but quite rare nowadays.
Display
HTC U23 Pro is a 6.7-inch OLED with a 1080p resolution, a 120-hertz refresh rate, and Victus protection. The display is sharp and contrasty. You get vibrant colors and they tend to pop regardless of the color mode you choose. There’s no support for HDR video and one thing I noticed was how thick the bezels around the screen are.
The max brightness of the display is decent at 725 nits with the manual slider though this doesn’t boost any brighter when auto mode is enabled and as for refresh rate you get a 120 hertz to smooth out your swiping and scrolling. However, with the high refresh rate mode enabled it will push 120 whenever possible and won’t dial down to save energy
Performance and Storage
The HTC U23 Pro has a headphone jack and just a single bottom-firing speaker. The speaker’s loudness is very good though and the output is clean. You can wake up and unlock the phone using the side-mounted fingerprint reader built into the power button. It isn’t the most accurate though and the unlock animation is a bit slow.
Storage on the U23 Pro is expandable through a microSD card on top of the 256 gigs built into the interface of the phone and is near stock. Android 13 which is quite clean and minimalistic everything is pretty standard besides a few Minor Details here and there.
The HTC U23 Pro runs on a Snapdragon 7 gen 1 chipset which is relatively new from last year in benchmarks. The phone does a decent job, it doesn’t blow anyone away but keeps up with the mid-range competition and in day-to-day use.
Battery
The HTC U23 Pro packs a 4600 milliamp hour battery and battery life isn’t very impressive. There’s support for 30-watt charging and with the proper adapter, you will be able to charge the phone from 0 to 60 percent in half an hour which isn’t bad.
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Camera
The camera isn’t better than that of the Z flip 5, here we have it.
- a 108-megapixel main camera with OIS
- an 8 megapixel Ultra-wide camera
- a 5-megapixel macro camera and a depth sensor
The main camera can produce 12-megapixel photos by default due to pixel binning, these look decent but unimpressive the colors are nice and natural. The shots are a bit on the contrasty side and the dynamic range is more narrow than we would like with dark shadows.
4K video from the main cam has good detail and low noise. There is electronic stabilization available but only in up to 1080p resolution.
Conclusion
So, that’s the HTC U23 Pro. Probably the most notable features here are the waterproofing and the 120 hertz AMOLED. The chipset is decent and there’s a headphone jack and notification LED which are nice to have.
The U23 Pro falls behind the competition there’s only a single speaker, the battery life isn’t great the camera performance is unimpressive and this phone isn’t cheap either.
