They were once the #1 brand smartphone in Australia now the Taiwanese Company HTC is trying to make a comeback, with a high spec OLED smartphone, we believe that at least one distributoris talking to the Company about a possible relaunch of the brand in Australia.

HTC’s phone business went backwards in Australia due in part to poor international management and marketing that was seen as being Asian centric.

The business was then acquired in 2017 by Google for US1.8 billion with more than 2,000 engineers from HTC joining Google who also got a non-exclusive license to HTC’s intellectual property.

HTC retained its Vive VR division and continued to design its own smartphones, which five years later are being launched back into the smartphone market.

Much of HTC’s smartphone DNA is found in the Google Pixel in particular the Google Pixel 6 and 7.

The deal delivered for Google a vast new engineering base in Taipei, Taiwan, where HTC is located.

Overnight HTC announced the HTC U23 Pro, which sits in the affordable premium sub $1,000 smartphone market where brands such as Motorola and Nokia, are stripping share away from Chinese brands such as Oppo.

The HTC U23 Pro packs a 6.7-inch FHD+ OLED screen, Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 power, and a quad camera system (kind of) into an IP67-rated body with Gorilla Glass Victus protection around front.

There is also a 4,600mAh battery, as well as 30W wired charging and 15W wireless charging support.

You also get a 3.5mm headphone jack.

At this stage it’s not known whether the device that is available online will be sold by Australian retailers.

Another key feature is the ‘quad’ camera set-up featuring a 108MP main camera with OIS and a wide f/1.7 aperture, an 8MP ultra-wide, a 5MP macro and a 2MP depth sensor.

You also get a 32MP selfie camera around front.

the U23 Pro also features a 6.7-inch OLED display, which operates at 2,400 x 1,080 pixels and 120 Hz with a 393 PPI pixel density. According to HTC, the large display sits within a 166.6 x 77.1 x 8.9 mm chassis. In other words, the U23 Pro has an 84.4% screen-to-body ratio, with a comparatively thick bottom bezel.

The U23 Pro also comes with a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, despite featuring an OLED display.

Also, HTC has included a MicroSD card reader, a 3.5 mm jack, Android 13 and its VIVERSE app for connecting with the VIVE XR Elite headset. HTC has not confirmed whether it intends to offer the U23 Pro outside Taiwan,

8 GB RAM/256 GB storage – $832
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