HTC U12 Plus review: narrow design is ergonomic and camera is good, but it's slippery, solid-state buttons are a disaster, and it lacks 3.5mm jack and adapter
Vlad Savov / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
HTC has been here before: the U Ultra dropped the headphone jack and drew fire for battery life, while last year's U11 kept the jack and won reviewers over with Edge Sense. The U12 Plus reverses course again — jack gone, and this time no adapter in the box — while adding solid-state buttons that The Verge calls a disaster.
The competitive frame is unforgiving: LG's V30 was praised specifically for ergonomics and battery life, so a flagship criticized for being slippery and awkward to press is ceding ground on exactly the axes rivals are judged well on.
First-order effects
- Buyers of the U12 Plus get a good camera and narrow ergonomic body but must supply their own dongle for wired audio and live with buttons that give no tactile feedback.
- HTC's flagship pitch now leans entirely on camera and design, since the review flags two hardware decisions — the missing jack and the solid-state buttons — as self-inflicted wounds.
Second-order effects
- Rivals like LG can market the retention of a headphone jack and physical keys as differentiators against HTC at the same price tier.
- Shipping no adapter pushes U12 Plus buyers toward third-party dongles and wireless audio accessories, shifting attach-revenue to peripheral makers rather than HTC.
Third-order effects
- If solid-state buttons and jack-less designs keep spreading across flagships despite negative reviews, tactile feedback becomes a premium-tier feature rather than a default.
- Review consensus is increasingly the swing factor for second-tier Android brands like HTC, whose hardware gambles get punished harder than Apple's or Samsung's equivalent moves.
The trend: Flagship phones are steadily stripping out physical affordances — jacks, adapters, moving buttons — betting that design polish and cameras will outweigh what reviewers treat as daily-use regressions.