Opinion | The new HTC Desire 12S is HTC's latest uninspiring release

You could be forgiven for expressing shock at a headline of HTC releasing yet another phone. After all, there’s been a feeling in the air that every phone the Taiwanese company releases will be its last. HTC disagrees with that, though, and has come out with yet another phone—the Desire 12S.

We had harsh words for the Desire 12 phones when they were released much earlier in the year, and the 12S is just an incremental upgrade for the most part. And just as expected, the 12S continues in a similar style. The phone sports a 5.7-inch HD+ display, a 13 MP rear camera, a 13 MP selfie camera, up to 4 GB of RAM and up to 64 GB of storage. 

It’s powered by a Snapdragon 435, confusingly a downgrade from the Snapdragon 450 on the Desire 12+, and gets its juice from a 3075 mAh battery. At the rear of the device is a fingerprint reader, and it runs on Android 8.1 Oreo. 

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Desire 12S is its rear camera design. The bump looks exactly like its going to house two cameras—but there’s just one present. It’s also positioned somewhere between the top left corner and the middle of the phone, which makes it all seem like the designer slept off midway through dragging the asset to the top and just decided to roll with it.

The 3/32 GB variant comes with an MSRP that translates into US$195, while the 4/64 GB SKU ships with a price tag equivalent to US$230. Bang for your buck? Well, the Nokia 6.1 can be had on Amazon for US$179, while the Huawei Mate SE goes for US$220. You be the judge.